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THE    SONG    OF    THE    LARK 


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IN  THEIR  HISTORY* 
05EVELOPMEHT  £%>  PRINCIPLES 


EDMUND 


HDITOIC»1H  *  CHIEF 

^ 


CONSULTING  EDITORS 
J.  M  .HOPPIM,B.P.,  Yak  University 

ALFRED  V.  CHURCHILL  ,A.M.,  CoWkialWr«ty 


Fulfy   Illustrated 


NATIONAL    ART    SOCIETY 
Chicago 


•  1 


^  '-j. 


Copyright,  1907,  by  W.  E.  ERNST. 


INTRODUCTION. 

BRIEF  statement  of  the  aims  sought  in  this  work 
will  conduce  to  its  best  use.  That  aim  is  to  furnish 
such  comprehensive,  systematic,  and  illustrated 
instruction  on  the  fine  arts,  now  in  such  demand,  as 
will  most  nearly  replace  university  teaching  for  those 
unable  to  secure  it.  Instruction  worthy  of  the  sub- 
ject should  be  comprehensive,  and  a  glance  at  the  table  of  contents 
will  show  how  the  principles  and  history  of  both  fine  art  and  decorative 
design  have  in  turn  been  treated. 

Such  instruction  should  also  be  systematic,  and  to  that  end  the 
text  has  been  arranged  topically  and  chronologically  into  four  main 
divisions  treating  architecture,  sculpture,  painting  and  decoration. 
Each  chapter  is  sub-divided  into  as  nearly  equal  portions  as  possible, 
each  representing  a  daily  lesson  as  indicated  by  numbers  following  the 
sub-titles. 

The  illustrations  have  been  selected  with  great  care,  with  the  sole 
idea  of  supplementing  the  text,  and  the  entire  course  will  contain  a 
collection  of  the  World's  masterpieces,  the  study  of  which  will  prove 
a  constant  source  of  pleasure  and  profit. 

The  contributors  to  this  series  are  nearly  all  instructors  in  leading 
Universities  and  Art  Institutes  whose  standing  insures  lessons  of  a 
university  grade. 

The  reader  is  strongly  recommended  to  study  the  work  entire 
before  attempting  extended  research  in  any  single  period,  whether 
ancient  or  modern.  The  part  is  best  seen  in  the  light  of  the  whole. 
More  especially  the  instruction  on  the  principles  and  development  of 
art  is  indispensable  to  a  proper  understanding  of  the  historic  part  found 
here  or  elsewhere. 

This  work  is  published  with  the  belief  that  it  will  prove  an  in- 
spiration to  the  student  and  art  lover,  and  it  is  hoped  will  powerfully 
promote  that  appreciation  of  the  beautiful  which  is  one  of  the  traits 
proper  and  peculiar  to  man. 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS. 

EDITOR— EDMUND  BUCKLEY,  A.M.,  Ph.D.,  The  University  of  Chicago. 

(  J.  M.  HOPPIN,  D.D. ,  Professor  of  the  History  of  Art,  Yale  University 

CONSULTING  EDITORS—^  ALFRED  V  CHURCHILL,  A.M.,  Director  of  the  Department  of  Fine  Arts,  Teachers' 
(          College,  Columbia  University. 

TECHNIQUE  AND    PRINCIPLES   OF   ART: 

Sculpture  n 

Painting  34 

Architecture    -  45 

Decoration  47 

General  Principles  60 
Russell  Sturgis,  A.M.,  Ph.D.,  Writer  and  Editor  on  Fine  Arts,  New  York. 

REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS   ON   THE   PRINCIPLES  OP  ART:  79 

Alfred   V.    Churchill,  A.M.,    Director  of  the   Department  of  Fine  Arts,   Teachers'   College, 
Columbia  University. 

DEVELOPMENT    OF   ART:  Four  Forces  in  Art  124 

Form  and  Content  129 

Historical  Development  -       I3l 

A.    L.    Frothingham,   Jr.,    Ph.D.,    Professor    of    Archaeology  and  History  of   Art,   Princeton 
University. 

PRE-GREEK   ART:  Egyptian  Art 

Chaldaeo-Assyrian  Art    - 
Phoenician  Art 

John  Pickard,  A.M.,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Classical  Archaeology  and  History  of  Art,  University 
of  Missouri. 

ARCHITECTURE;  Greek  155 

Roman  163 

Byzantine  J75 

Romanesque  17% 

Gothic  181 

Mohammedan  *8g 
A.  M.  Brooks,  A.M.,  Professor  in  History  of  Fine  Art,  University  of  Indiana. 

ARCHITECTURE:  Renaissance  190 

Modern  221 

H.  Langford  Warren,  Professor  of  Architecture,  Harvard  University. 

SCULPTURE:  Greek  235 

Roman  273 

Edmund  von  Mach,   A.M.,   Ph.D.,   Instructor  in  History  of  Greek  Art,  Harvard  University, 
and  in  History  of  Sculpture,  Wellesley  College. 

SCULPTURE:  Medieval  27& 

Renaissance  and  Decadence  286 

William  O.  Partridge,  Sculptor,  New  York. 

SCULPTURE:      Nineteenth   Century  in 

France  -       299 

Northern  Europe  3*3 

Southern  Europe  3T7 

England  3*9 

America 
Larado  Taft,  Instructor  in  Sculpture,  Art  Institute,  Chicago. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

PAINTING:                                                Greek  and  Roman                                                  -            .            .  334 

Early  Christian  .-      337 

Byzantine                                                                                -            -  338 

Romanesque                                                        -  -      338 

Gothic  338 

Italian  Gothic                                                                            -  -      340 

Italian  Renaissance                                                                        -  344 

PAINTING:                                                Spanish  Renaissance  -    '  409 

French  Renaissance  411 

Flemish  Renaissance                                                 '    -            .  -       412 

Dutch  Renaissance                                                                            -  420 

German  Renaissance                                                     -  -      421 
Olaf  M.  Brauner,  Assistant  Professor  of  Drawing  and  Modeling,  Cornell  University. 

PAINTING:     Seventeenth  and  Eighteenth  Centuries  in 

Europe                                                                                         ,   -  -       437 

Italy                                                                                                       -  442 

Spain  448 

Flanders                                                                               ..         «<  455 

Holland                                                                                      -  -      460 

France        -  472 

England  -      481 

Germany  497 
J.  W.  Pattison,  Instructor,  Art  Institute,  Chicago. 

PAINTING:      Nineteenth   Century   in 

France  501 

Belgium     -  557 

Italy  566 

Spain  571 
Arthur  Hoeber,  Art  Critic,  New  York. 

PAINTING:      Nineteenth   Century  in 

Germany  -       579 

Holland      -  625 

Sweden  -      628 

Norway  63 1 

Denmark  -       632 

Russia,  etc.  63 
Robert  Koehler,  Director  or  the  Minneapolis  School  of  Fine  Arts. 

PAINTING:      Nineteenth   Century   in 

England  643 

Scotland    -  662 

America  -       671 
Frank  F.  Frederick,  Professor  of  Art  and  Design,  University  of  Illinois. 

DECORATIVE    DESIGN:                     Principles  -      699 

History  709 
H.  E.  Everett,  Assistant  Professor  of  Interior  Architecture,  University  of  Pennsylvania. 

DECORATIVE    DESIGN:                      Application  to  the  Crafts  745 
Bessie  Bennett,  Assistant  Librarian,  Art  Institute,  Chicago. 

ORIENTAL   ART:                                    Indian  765 

Chinese      -                                                                          -  775 

Japanese  -       783 
Edmund  Buckley,  A.M.,  Ph.D.,  Docent  in  Hierology,  University  of  Chicago. 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS. 

EDITOR— EDMUND  BUCKLEY,  A.M.,  Ph.D.,  The  University  of  Chicago. 

{J.  M.  HOPPIN,  D.D. ,  Professor  of  the  History  of  Art,  Yale  University 
ALFRED  V.  CHURCHILL,  A.M.,  Director  of  the  Department  of  Fine  Arts,  Teachers' 
College,  Columbia  University. 

TECHNIQUE  AND    PRINCIPLES   OF   ART: 

Sculpture  -        n 

Painting  34 

Architectuie    -  -        45 

Decoration  47 

General  Principles  60 
Russell  Sturgis,  A.M.,  Ph.D.,  Writer  and  Editor  on  Fine  Arts,  New  York. 

REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS   ON   THE   PRINCIPLES  OF  ART:  79 

Alfred   V.    Churchill,  A.M.,    Director  of  the  Department  of  Fine  Arts,  Teachers'   College, 
Columbia  University. 

DEVELOPMENT   OF   ART:  Four  Forces  in  Art  124 

Form  and  Content  129 

Historical  Development         -  -       131 

A.    L.    Frothingham,   Jr.,   Ph.D.,   Professor    of    Archaeology  and  History  of  Art,   Princeton 
University. 

PRE-GREEK   ART:  Egyptian  Art  141 

Chaldaeo-Assyrian  Art    -  147 

Phoenician  Art  151 

John  Pickard,  A.M.,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Classical  Archaeology  and  History  of  Art,  University 
of  Missouri. 

ARCHITECTURE:                                   Greek  155" 

Roman  163 

Byzantine  175 

Romanesque  178 

Gothic  181 

Mohammedan  -                                                                                       189 
A.  M.  Brooks,  A.M.,  Professor  in  History  of  Fine  Art,  University  of  Indiana. 

ARCHITECTURE:  Renaissance  -       190 

Modern       -  221 

H.  Langford  Warren,  Professor  of  Architecture,  Harvard  University. 

SCULPTURE:  Greek  -      235 

Roman       -  273 

Edmund  yon'Mach,   A.M.,   Ph.D.,   Instructor  in  History  of  Greek  Art,  Harvard  University, 
and  in"  History  of  Sculpture,  Wellesley  College. 

SCULPTURE:  Medieval  276 

Renaissance  and  Decadence  286 

William  O.  Partridge,  Sculptor,  New  York. 

SCULPTURE:      Nineteenth   Century  in 

France  -      299 

Northern  Europe  3T3 

Southern  Europe  3T7 

England  3iQ 

America  322 
Larado  Taft,  Instructor  in  Sculpture,  Art  Institute,  Chicago. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 
PAINTING:  Greek  and  Roman  - 


-  .            .                                     334 

Early  Christian  -            ,                    '    .            .      337 

Byzantine                                       -  .            .         .  .            .             33g 

Romanesque  .            ..            .            .            -      338 


Gothic 


Holland 
France 


338 


Italian  Gothic  .                            .      34O 

Italian  Renaissance  ....             344 

PAINTING:                                                Spanish  Renaissance  -            ..           -      409 

French  Renaissance  .            .            .            .             4II 

Flemish  Renaissance                          .        .    .  .            .         .   .      4I2 

Dutch  Renaissance  -            .,            .             42O 

German  Renaissance  ...      42i 
Olaf  M.  Brauner,  Assistant  Professor  of  Drawing  and  Modeling,  Cornell  University. 

PAINTING:     Seventeenth  and  Eighteenth  Centuries  in 

Europe  .            .          ...            .      437 

Italy  '.            442 

Spain  ,      448 

Flanders  -                        -            -            455 


460 
472 


England 

Germany  4Q7 

J.  W.  Pattison,  Instructor,  Art  Institute,  Chicago. 

PAINTING:      Nineteenth   Century   in 

France  -            ,            .            .       gol 

Belgium  -                                                              ...            557 

Italy     -  .      566 

Spain  57I 
Arthur  Hoeber,  Art  Critic,  New  York. 

PAINTING:      Nineteenth   Century  in 

Germany  .'.      579 

Holland     -  ...            525 

Sweden  .            .      628 

Norway  .             631 

Denmark  -                        -      632 

Russia,  etc.  -                                       63 
Robert  Koehler,  Director  of  the  Minneapolis  School  of  Fine  Arts. 

PAINTING:      Nineteenth   Century  in 

England  -      643 

Scotland     -  ...  552 

America  -  -          .. '     671 

Frank  F.  Frederick,  Professor  of  Art  and  Design,  University  of  Illinois. 

DECORATIVE   DESIGN:  Principles         -  -  ~  -  -      699 

History  7o9 

H.  E.  Everett,  Assistant  Professor  of  Interior  Architecture,  University  of  Pennsylvania. 

DECORATIVE   DESIGN:  Application  to  the  Crafts       -  -      745 

Bessie  Bennett,  Assistant  Librarian,  Art  Institute,  Chicago. 

ORIENTAL  ART:                                   Indian                                                    -  ...      7&5 

Chinese      -                                                              -  -            -             775 

Japanese  -            -      783 
Edmund  Buckley,  A.M.,  Ph.D.,  Docent  in  Hierology,  University  of  Chicago. 


ART — PRACTICE,    HISTORY,    THEORY. 
Drawn  by  Clara  L.  Poiuers,  The  Art  Institute,  Chicago. 


The  Technique  and  Principles  of  Visual  Art. 


BY 


RUSSELL  STURGIS,  A.M.,  Ph.D. 

AUTHOR    AND    EDITOR    IN    FINE    ART,    NEW    YORK. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ART.(i) 
The  language  in  which  ideas  are 
conveyed  in  prose  and  poetry  is  a 
language  familiar  to  all  persons 
of  some  education.  When,  therefore,  the 
thought  is  more  noble  and  inspiring  in  char- 
acter, more  imaginative  in  its  origin,  than 
usual  and  when  the  character  of  the  ex- 
pression changes  to  what  we  know  as  poetry 
(whether  this  be  in  verse  or  in  measured  and 
stately  prose)  the  language  still  remains 
familiar.  Even  if,  as  frequently  happens, 
some  changes  occur  in  it — such  as  the  use  of 
words  not  familiar  in  every -day  writing  or 
speech,  or  an  order  of  words  different  from 
that  used  in  conversation — ,such  changes 
hardly  tend  to  make  this  word-language 
unfamiliar.  The  loftiest  poetry  .of  Milton 
contains  the  same  words,  with  but  few 
exceptions  either  way,  as  the  most  narrow- 
minded,  hard,  technical,  sectarian  contro- 
versy of  his  time.  He  who  understands  the 


language  of  the  one  will  understand  the 
language  of  the  other.  If  the  reader  of  Mil- 
ton's poetry  be  not  thoroughly  in  touch  with 
it,  this  is  not  because  he  does  not  understand 
the  language,  but  because  he  has  not  famil- 
iarized himself  with  the  arrangement  of 
thought  peculiar  to  stately  poetry. 

If,  however,  the  music  of  a  great  composer 
be  in  question,  the  matter  is  very  different. 
It  is  not  universally  true  that  modern  people 
of  some  education  understand  the  language 
of  music.  And  yet,  as  it  is  altogether  com- 
mon for  even  very  ignorant  people  to  sing 
over  their  work  or  to  "whistle  as  they  go  for 
want  of  thought,"  it  is  evident  that  this 
language  of  music  is  commonly  understood, 
up  to  a  certain  point.  With  the  language  of 
poetry  every  person  of  some  education  is 
familiar;  he  understands  the  whole  of  it, 
nor  is  there  any  poem  of  his  own  language 
which  the  ordinary  reader  is  not  competent 
to  put  into  other  words  almost  at  sight. 
The  thought  may  baffle  him  but  the  words 


12 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


will  not.  With  music,  however,  while  the 
ordinarily  well-educated  hearer  understands 
some  of  the  phraseology,  he  is  far  from 
understanding  it  all,  and  in  the  instrumenta- 
tion by  a  large  orchestra  of  an  important 
musical  composition  there  are  utterances 
which  pass  over  the  listener's  head  as  if  he 
had  not  heard  them.  It  is  not  merely  that 
the  thoughts  are  somewhat  beyond  his  scope, 
as  they  may  be:  it  is  also  true  that  the 
language  itself  has  not  been  and  cannot  be 
entirely  seized  by  such  a  listener.  The  most 
delicate  shades  of  musical  thought  are  lost 
because  the  language  in  which  they  are 


FUJIYAMA        "THE   PEERLESS   MOUNTAIN." 

conveyed    is    not    wholly    familiar    to    the 
hearer. 

When  the  arts  of  design  are  under  consid- 
eration, the  difficulty  of  understanding  the 
language  is  at  once  more  easily  perceived 
and  far  more  general.  By  the  arts  of  design 
are  meant  sculpture  in  all  its  varieties, 
drawing,  coloring,  engraving,  the  arrange- 
ment of  ornament  and  ornamental  treat- 
ment. The  language  in  which  thesed  arts 
are  embodied  is  even  less  generally  under- 
stood than  the  language  of  music.  The 
language  in  which  a  painter  expresses  his 
thoughts  is  understood  by  but  very  few  of 
the  persons  who  stand  in  front  of  his 
picture.  This  is  because,  in  the  first 
place,  most  persons  abandon  the  pencil  and 


all  other  tools  by  which  drawing,  modeling 
and  the  like  are  done,  immediately  afte, 
their  earliest  childhood;  and,  secondly, 
because  the  comparatively  small  number 
who  keep  up  their  practice  of  drawing,  have 
been  so  taught  that  the  language  of  the 
graphic  and  plastic  arts  still  remains  to 
them,  as  it  were,  a  dead  language  which 
they  understand  about  as  much  as  school- 
boys understand  Latin.  That  is  to  say,  they 
have  a  general  notion  that  there  are  ideas 
behind  this  half-understood  language,  and 
they  are  accustomed  to  get  at  these  ideas, 
after  a  fashion,  by  translating  them  into 
their  own  vernacular.  The 
schoolboy  cannot  be  said  to 
read  Latin.  He  has  learned 
what  are  the  English  equiva- 
lents or  approximate  equiva- 
lents of  certain  Latin  words 
and  phrases,  the  lexicon  gives 
him  others,  and  he  translates 
the  Latin  into  English,  and 
then  begins  to  understand  the 
author's  thought.  So  in  the 
matter  of  painting,  (let  us  take 
this  art  as  being  the  one  most 
familiar  to  the  community)  the 
visitor  to  a  gallery  hardly  un- 
derstands the  language  used 
by  the  painter,  but  he  has  been 
taught  by  the  conversation  of 
those  about  him  and  by  what  he 
has  read  to  take  certain  forms, 
certain  patches  of  color,  certain 
outlines  as  signifying  things  which  are  far 
more  familiar  to  him  in  their  verbal  dress.  A 
picture  of  a  mountainous  landscape  he  trans- 
lates into  the  vernacular  as  "mountain 
range, "  or  "  range  of  mountains, "  or  "  moun- 
tainous country,"  or,  perhaps,  "Bernese 
Oberland,"  or,  perhaps,  "Fujiyama  in  Ja- 
pan," and  thereupon  begins  an  unconscious 
translating  of  the  whole  scene  into  the  terms 
of  verbal  or  literary  expression.  After  the  first 
moment  it  is  not  the  picture  which  he  is  study- 
ing nearly  as  much  as  his  own  recollections. 
The  picture  reminds  him  of  impressions  and 
associations  of  his  own ;  but  he  does  not  read 
the  picture.  He  is  not  accustomed  to  look 
at  mountains  as  a  painter  looks  at  them. 
He  knows  little  of  those  things  which  the 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


painter  sees  and  enjoys  in  a  mountain  land- 
scape. He  knows,  however,  much  ot  those 
historical  and  sentimental  associations  which 
the  phrases  quoted  above  bring  to  the  mind 
of  every  reader,  and  his  thought  in  front  of 
the  picture  is  in  the  direction  of  this  literary, 
histoiical,  patriotic,  semi-religious,  wholly 
sentimental  impression.  And  this  misunder- 
standing comes,  let  it  be  said  once  more, 
mainly  from  ignorance  of  the  painter's  lan- 
guage. The  painter's  language  is  closely 
fitted  to  the  painter's  thought.  Centuries 
of  tradition  have  made  and  in  a  sense  per- 
fected that  language.  Every  one  of  our 
painters  to-day  paints  differently  from  what 
he  would  have  done  had  not  Paul  Veronese, 
had  not  Rembrandt,  had  not  eailier  men 
than  they,  lived  and  worked.  But  this  lan- 
guage of  the  early  or  of  the  modern  painter 
is  so  remote  from  the  daily  habits  of  man 
that  it  need  surprise  no  one  that  ignorance 
of  that  language  is  the  rule.  Most  of  us, 
when  we  draw,  do  so  by  way  of  memoran- 
dum, with  the  idea  of  conveying  to  another 
a  notion  of  that  which  words  cannot  express, 
as  the  shape  of  a  field,  the  arrangement  of 
the  rooms  in  a  house,  or  an  apartment,  or 
the  like;  but  then,  most  of  us  do  not  draw 
at  all;  and  moreover,  such  handling  of  the 
pencil  as  is  here  assumed  has  nothing  what- 
ever to  do  with  the  use  of  the  artistic  lan- 
guage to  express  the  artistic  thought.  One 
may  draw  a  good  deal  in  certain  ways  with- 
out any  suspicion  of  the  fact  that  an  artist's 
drawing  is  radically  different  in  character 
from  that  to  which  he  is  accustomed. 

Therefore  it  is  that,  in  order  to  explain 
the  meaning  of  fine  art,  and  to  set  down 
hints  as  to  the  better  understanding  of  it,  it 
is  necessary  to  describe  the  language  of  art 
itself,  and  to  show  what,  in  a  general  way, 
are  its  grammar  and  its  rhetoric.  And  the 
first  development  or  shape  of  fine  art  which 
we  take  up  had  better  be  that  of  pure 
foim,  merely  because  it  is  more  simple, 
though  in  no  respect  less  important  or  less 
lofty,  than  that  other  manifestation  of  it 
which  we  loosely  call  painting;  and  much 
less  complex  than  any  of  the  arts  of  which 
decoration  is  the  sole  purpose.  Sculpture 
has  to  do  with  the  solid;  painting  and  all 
its  modifications  have  to  do  with  the  flat; 


and  the  language  of  fine  art  expressing 
itself  upon  'the  flat  surface  is  much  more 
complex  than  that  of  art  expressing  itself  in 
the  solid;  while  Architecture  and  all  similar 
arts  of  adornment  have  structure  also,  and 
often  a  very  elaborate — even  a  scientifically 
accurate — structure,  upon  which  they  de- 
pend. 


T 


HE      SCULPTOR'S 
TORY    WORK.  (2) 


PREPARA- 


When  a  sculptor  of  our  own  time 
wishes  to  make  a  memorandum  of 
a  finely  formed  limb,   or  of  an  interesting 
head   which   he    sees;    or  to  fix  for  future 
reference  an  interesting  thought  which  he 
has  had,  he  takes  anything  plastic — anything 
which  he   can   mold    into  shape  freely  and 
which  will   keep   its  shape   for  awhile,  and 
makes   a    model.      Let   us  suppose   that    he 
goes  among  the  Indians  of  the  Northwest, 
or  across  the  Canada  line,  the  chances  are 
that  he  will  bring  home  from  that  region  a 
number  of  heads  of    redmen  and  of    fron- 
tiersmen,  figures    of     their    wolfish-looking 
dogs,    of   wolves   and   bears   in   their    wild 
nature,  and  of  mustangs;  and  that  each  of 
these    figures    and    heads    will    have    been 
modeled   in  wax  at  about  one-twelfth  and 
one-half   respectively  of   the    scale    of   life. 
The  reader  is  requested  to  observe  that  the 
phrase  half  life  size  would  be  open  to  misun- 
derstanding, for  a  head  which  is  half  as  high 
as  life  will  be  also  half  as  deep  and  half  as 
wide  horizontally,  and  in  this  way  will  be 
only  one  quarter  of  the  size  of  the  original 
head.     These  heads  will  have  been  modeled 
somewhat  in   this  way:    A  lump  of  wax  is 
held  on  the  end  of  a  stick  a  few  inches  long, 
and,  with  another  little  piece  of  stick  hardly 
more  carefully  shaped  into  the  form  of   a 
tool    than    the    holder   itself,   and    with    his 
thumbs,  the  sculptor  pushes,   pulls,   bleaks 
off  and  sticks  on  again,  incises  deeply,  heaps 
up   into  projecting  masses,   and    generally 
manipulates  his  plastic  material,  until    out 
of  a  shapeless  mass  a  head  is  slowly  evolved. 
The  whole  form  of  a  man  or  a  quadruped 
will  be  modeled  in  the  same  way,  except  that 
it  is  set  up  on  a  bit  of  board  which  serves  as 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


its  base.  In  each  case  the  sculptor  is  mak- 
ing a  sketch  from  life.  The  artistic  thought 
involved  in  this  is  not  more  profound  than 
that  he  sees  very  quickly  the  more  essential 
characteristics  of  the  head  which  attracts 
him.  A  person  having  all  his  gift  and  his 
knowledge  of  accurate  modeling,  but  not 
having  his  artistic  insight — if  we  can  imag- 
ine such  a  person — might  produce  a  copy  of 
the  living  head  which  to  many  people  would 
seem  more  accurately  truthful  as  a  piece  of 
portraiture  than  the  model  made  by  a  very 
great  sculptor  indeed;  but  there  the  hasty 
spectator  would  be  ill  advised.  Resem- 
blance is  of  two  kinds  which,  of  course,  pass 
into  one  another  by  insensible  gradations. 
There  is  the  resemblance  of  caricature,  in 
which  if  a  man  has  a  peculiar  setting  on  of 
the  nose  to  the  brows  it  will  be  seized  and 
the  subject  himself  may  be  surprised  when 
he  notes  that  to  this  clever  caricaturist  his 
head  appeared  of  this  peculiar  form.  There 
is  the  good,  familiar,  photograph-like  resem- 
blance; and  there  is  many  a  poor  and  feeble 
artist  who  has  a  gift  at  catching  this  sort  of 
likeness,  and  who  makes  money  thereby.  But 
the  work  of  the  more  profound  observer  and 
the  more  powerful  master  of  expression  will 
betray  an  insight  into  the  essential  charac- 
teristics of  the  head  which  will  be  altogether 
a  surprise  to  those  persons  who  are  capable 
of  perceiving  it.  In  other  words,  an  artist 
of  great  ability  can  express  in  a  few  min- 
utes' modeling  more  of  the  vital  character- 
istics of  the  head  than  his  inferior  could 
express  in  a  day's  work. 

What  are  those  vital  characteristics?  That 
is,  of  course,  a  question  which  will  receive 
a  different  answer  each  time.  The  grada- 
tions of  surface  in  the  human  head  are  so 
subtle  that  as  a  mere  subject  for  plastic  art 
it  is  the  finest  thing  we  know.  Moreover, 
as  these  gradations  express  to  eveiy  one  of 
us,  rightly  or  wrongly,  something  about  the 
character  of  the  person — as  we  all  believe 
more  or  less  in  physiognomy,  and  fancy  that 
we  can  read  character — so  the  intelligent 
study  of  the  head  goes  beyond  the  mere 
rendering  of  exactly  the  gradations  of  sur- 
face which  are  visible  and  even  in  a  sense 
tangible.  The  sculptor  we  have  imagined 
as  modeling  an  Indian  head  may  not  him- 


self notice  that  there  are  certain  character- 
istics in  the  Indian  head  he  is  studying 
which  indicate,  let  us  say,  a  strain  of  white 
blood;  but  the  highly- trained  ethnologist 
will  see  that  immediately  in  the  head  as 
reproduced  by  the  sculptor,  and  if  such  an 
expert  in  our  eastern  States  sees  the  head 
which  was  modeled  in  Manitoba  he  would 
say  at  once  to  the  sculptor:  "What  chief  is 
that?  He  is  clearly  a  half-breed." 

So  far  we  have  considered  only  the  study 
from  life ;  but  the  first  sentence  of  this  divi- 
sion of  our  subject  spoke  also  of  the  embody- 
ing of  an  original  thought.  That  is  what 
happens  when  a  sculptor  sees  in  his  mental 
vision  a  pose  of  one  figure,  a  grouping  of 
two  figures  or  more,  an  expressive  gesture, 
a  massing  of  drapery. — anything  fine,  a 
thought  which  he  cannot  afford  to  lose.  He 
will  put  that  thought  of  his  into  wax  or 
clay,  at  once,  on  the  spot;  he  will  risk  its 
loss  no  more  than  would  a  writer  miss  the 
chance  of  recombining  a  thought  such  as  he 
is  accustomed  to  express  in  words. 

If,  now,  the  same  sculptor  undertakes  the 
task  of  modeling  an  ideal  statue;  a  Wisdom, 
let  us  say,  or  a  portrait  of  Julius  Caesar,  or 
an  angel,  he  will,  so  far  as  the  head  is  con- 
cerned, study  those  forms  which  seem  to  him 
expressive  of  the  idea  he  has  of  the  being 
whom  he  must  represent.  But  also  he  will 
set  that  head  upon  a  body  which,  in  his 
thought,  may  support  it  and  lead  up  to  it  in 
the  most  perfect  way,  may  combine  with  it 
so  that  head  and  body  will  form  one  crea- 
ture. Thus,  let  us  suppose  that  the  sculptor 
seeks  to  follow  a  somewhat  original  path, 
and  that  he  selects  for  a  type  of  his  Wisdom 
a  strong  man  of  middle  age  rather  than  a 
long-bearded  elder.  He  will  not  represent 
that  man  as  a  highly  trained  athlete.  He 
will  give  him  a  massive  form,  perhaps,  and 
well  developed  muscles,  but  he  will  by  no 
means  study  the  artificially  modified  body  of 
the  professional  foot  racer  or  boxer.  Even 
if  he  were,  as  no  modern  man  is  or  can  be, 
surrounded  by  such  athletes  as  the  Greek 
sculptor  saw  daily,  young  men  highly  trained 
in  all  the  exercises  of  the  palestra,  in  the 
pentathlon  and  in  battle,  and  as  beautiful 
as  vigorous  in  form,  it  is  still  not  the  body 
of  the  prizer  or  the  warrior  upon  which  he 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ART. 


would  set  the  head  expressive  of  matured, 
patient,  and  highly  wrought  intelligence. 
He  sets  himself  to  model  a  head  which  he 
thinks  will  give  the  impression  of  profound 
thought  with  kindliness,  with  patience,  with 
love  of  mankind ;  and  he  builds  up  a  bodily 
frame  which  to  him,  the  artist,  may  be  the 
ideal  male  body  as  of  a  reflecting  and  studi- 
ous man  in  perfect  health:  the  ideal  of  such 
a  body,  not  the  copy  of  any  body  he  has 
ever  seen ;  but  of  this  hereafter. 

What  is  it,  then,  that  the  sculptor  does 
with  his  Wisdom?  He  sets  up  in  his  studio 
a  frame  of  iron  bars  and  stout  wires  which 
will  serve  as  the  main  axes  of  the  body  and 
limbs  of  his  proposed  figure;  and  this  he 
mounts  on  a  turn-table,  which  revolves  upon 
a  low  pedestal.  This,  of  course,  is  for  the 
full-size  model.  But  he  also  works  contin- 
ually at  a  small  model,  or  at  more  than  one. 
The  small  model  is  not  by  any  means  final 
in  its  disposition,  but  it  is  a  most  valuable 
guide.  It  is  not  final,  because  it  is  a  fact 
well  known  to  all  sculptors  that  nothing  can 
be  successfully  copied  in  large  from  the 
small,  nor  successfully  copied  in  small  from 
the  large  original.  A  mathematically  accu- 
rate reduction  from  a  colossal  statue  is  a 
monster;  a  mathematically  accurate  enlarge- 
ment of  a  statuette  is  feeble.  The  reasons 
for  this  will  be  more  clear  by  and  by,  but 
the  fact  must  be  stated  here  in  order  that  it 
may  be  explained  what  a  sculptor's  arduous 
task  really  is. 

He  works  at  his  small  model  contin- 
uously in  order  that  he  may  embody  in  it 
every  succeeding  thought  as  to  form  and 
as  to  light  and  shade,  the  effect  and  the 
result  of  that  form  which  his  nightly  visions 
and  his  daily  observations  bring  to  his  per- 
ception, but  meanwhile  he  recognizes  the 
fact  that  these  forms  which  he  puts  upon 
the  small  model  are  not  absolutely  those 
which  are  to  go  into  the  greatly  enlarged 
final  work.  So,  at  last,  he  approaches  his 
main  task,  and  if  he  has  assistants,  pupils 
and  the  like,  they  throw  around  the  iron 
frame  or  skeleton  great  masses  of  wet  model- 
ing clay,  "mud,"  as  the  studio  slang  has  it, 
and  the  pupils  go  on  heaping  it  up  and 
working  this  mass  into  something  like  the 
shape  given  by  the  small  model.  Nearer 


STATUE    OF    ARISTOTLE. 
fn  the  Spada  Palace,  Rome. 


and  nearer,  hour  by  hour,  the  great  ten-foot 
statue  draws  to  the  semblance  of  the  foot- 
high  model ;  and  the  sculptor  comes  in  and 
goes  out,  and  throws  words  of  criticism  and 
encouragement  to  his  subordinates,  and  at 
last  sees  that  his  own  turn  has  come,  and 
that  now  he  must  put  his  own  fingers  into 
the  clay.  Two  days'  work  may  complete 
the  first  realization  of  his  idea  in  the  large 
model.  Two  days'  work  may  complete  it, 
and  yet  there  may  be  waiting  for  him  two 
months  of  anxious  watching,  of  viewing  the 
large  model  in  different  lights,  of  looking  at 
it  reflected  in  a  mirror,  of  studying  photo- 
graphs of  it  made  hastily  from  this  point  and 
from  that,  of  turning  it  round  and  round 
slowly  in  front  of  him  and  watching  the 
changing  outlines.  Two  months  of  such 
toil  and  thought  and  care  may  elapse  and 
still  the  work  be  unsatisfactory,  still  the 
thought  remain  imperfectly  expressed, 
still  the  artistic  ideal  remain  as  much  out 


i6 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


of  reach  of  the  artistic  method  of  expres- 
sion as,  in  the  more  familiar  language  of 
words,  your  poetical  idea  may  refuse  to  fit 
itself  into  the  verses  which  you  have  half 
finished. 


USE  OF  THE  MODEL. (3) 
We  have  been  considering,  how- 
ever, only  the  general  progress  of 
the  work.  As  to  details  there  is  a 
great  variety  of  possibilities.  Different  artists 
have  their  different  methods  of  work.  Thus 
the  small  model  of  a  draped  figure,  such  as  a 
Wisdom  will  generally  be,  may  have  been  and 
probably  will  have  been  modeled  originally  as 
a  draped  figure;  and  all  in  one  piece,  all  at 
one  effort,  as  the  simple  embodiment  of  a 
simple  thought.  The  sculptor  will  have 
modeled  his  drapery  as  the  chief  subject  of 
his  composition  after  the  head.  Perhaps, 
indeed,  it  might  be  more  generally  correct 
to  say  that  he  models  head  and  drapery 
together  in  one  composition; — a  figure 


INTERIOR    OF    A    STUDIO.     SHOWING    SCULPTOR    AT    WORK. 
From  the  Painting  by  Geronte. 


which,  with  an  expressive  head  and  grace- 
fully or  vigorously  composed  drapery  below 
it,  is  to  be,  when  complete,  at  once  a  highly 
decorative  object  and  an  expressive  statue. 
When,  however,  the  large  figure  is  in  hand 
something  more  elaborate  in  detail  is 
needed;  thus,  anatomical  truth  is  needed, 
and  that  this  may  be  gained:  that  the  limbs 
may  hold  together,  that  the  legs  may  seem 
to  carry  the  figure  if  it  stands,  or  may  lead 
to  the  body  as  the  body  to  the  head  if  the 
figure  is  seated,  and  that  the  arms  may  be 
placed  so  as  to  be  not  merely  in  a  possible 
position,  but  also  in  a  position  of  abstract 
beauty  and  in  one  more  or  less  expressive 
of  the  pose,  the  tranquil  action  or  non-action 
of  the  figure — that  all  this  may  be  secured  it 
is  essential  to  model  the  figure  nude  and  to 
put  drapery  upon  it  afterwards.  The  true 
action  of  the  hidden  trunk  and  limbs  cannot 
be  produced  unless  trunk  and  limbs  are 
modeled  nude.  Now,  there  are  different 
ways  of  using  the  nude  living  model  in  the 
preparation  of  a  nude  statue,  or  in  the  prep- 
aration of  the  nude  figure  which  is  to  result 
in  the  draped  statue.  There  are  sculptors 
who  work  with  the  nude  model  always 
before  them.  There  are  others  who  prefer 
to  work  without  the  living  model,  and  then 
when  the  large  figure  is  posed,  set  up,  and 
in  a  sense  complete,  to  call  upon  the  living 
model  as  a  check,  as  a  means  of  correcting 
faults  in  the  original.  Sculptors,  as  well  as 
painters,  differ  widely  in  their  practice  in 
this  respect.  It  may,  however,  be  set  down 
as  generally  correct — at  all  events  as  a  very 
common  way  of  proceeding — that  the  small 
model  of  clay  or  of  wax  is  made  without  any 
more  than  a  cursory  glance  at  the  living 
model,  either  nude  or  draped,  but  that  when 
the  general  pose  or  attitude  has  been  deter- 
mined in  this  way,  then  the  nude  model  is 
kept  in  presence  all  the  time  while  the  large 
figure  is  being  set  up,  refined,  developed,  its 
modeling  perfected  in  the  nude,  and  the 
clothing  with  drapery  of  clay  added  there- 
unto. Now  it  is  to  be  observed  that  no 
sculptor  worthy  of  the  name  seeks  to  give  or 
would  for  a  moment  think  of  giving  a  por- 
trait of  his  model.  There  is  a  story  afloat 
of  a  great  painter  who  was  asked  where  he 
got  the  exquisite  faces  that  he  gave  to  his 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


ous  followers  copy,  thinking  that  by  copying 
it  they  become  sculptors  somewhat  equal  to 
the  master  himself.  The  few  records  we 
have  of  antiquity  in  this  respect  are  full  of 
the  setting  up  by  this  and  that  great  sculptor 
of  a  new  canon  or  standard  of  proportion 
between  the  parts  of  the  body.  A  figure  of 
the  school  of  Phidias  was  differently  propor- 
tioned from  one  of  the  Rhodian  school,  four 
hundred  years  later,  and,  between  the  two, 
there  were  endless  minor  divergences;  but 
always  in  the  way  of  noble  and  beautiful 
human  form.  So  in  more  recent  times  the 
modeling  of  a  nude  figure,  male  or  female, 
by  Michelangelo  is  very  different  indeed 
from  the  modeling  of  a  figure  by  his  prede- 
cessor, D.onatello,  and  by  his  successor, 
Jacopo  Sansovino.  It  does  not  require  a 
very  intimate  knowledge  or  a  very  good  eye 
to  perceive  it.  So,  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 


THE    PRISONER. 
By  Michelangelo,  in  the  Louvre,  Paris. 


madonnas,  and  who,  by  way  of  explaining 
how  hopeless  explanation  would  be,  in- 
structed his  grizzled  and  bearded  attendant, 
who  kept  his  studio  in  order,  to  take  the 
pose,  and  painted  from  him  the  beautiful  ma- 
donna which  he  had  in  his  mind.  Call  that 
an  exaggeration,  if  you  please;  it  is  an 
exaggeration  in  the  sense  of  the  truth.  The 
sculptor's  work  is  not  in  copying  his  model 
but  in  producing  in  visible  form  his  mental 
perception  of  something  beautiful,  and  what 
he  wants  of  the  living  model  is  that  hold 
upon  the  possibilities  of  life  which  he  must 
retain  if  he  expects  to  make  his  sculpture 
powerful  in  its  appeal  to  mankind. 

But  to  consider  further  this  matter  of  truth 
to  nature,  this  question  of  how  far  the 
artist  copies  his  model ;  let  it  be  remembered 
that  every  great  sculptor  has  a  manner 
peculiarly  his  own  and  one  which  his  numer- 


THE    FAUN. 
By  Pi'axitclcs,  a  Greek  Sculptor  of  the  Fourth  Century  fi.  C. 


i8 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


tury,  it  is  a  recognized  fact  that  one  man 
models  quite  in  the  lines  laid  down  by 
Michelangelo,  another  in  the  way  in  which 
a  Greek  of  the  fourth  century  would  have 
modeled  were  he  now  living  among  us,  and 
a  third  according  to  traditions  handed  down 
through  French  workmen  from  the  Middle 
Ages  to  the  eighteenth  century.  Not  that 
any  one  of  these  will  work  exactly  as  his 
exemplars  worked,  but  that  in  each  instance 
there  will  be  a  visible  resemblance  between 
the  work  of  the  modern  and  the  work  of  the 
ancients  whom  he  may  be  thought  to  have 
studied.  It  is  not  long  since  an  important 
statue  of  Michelangelo,  the  noble  work  of 
Paul  Bartlett,  and  now  in  the  Congressional 
Library,  was  exhibited  in  New  York;  and 
it  was  felt  immediately  by  sculptors  who 
saw  it  that  it  was  modeled  much  as  the 
subject  of  the  statue  himself  would  have 


modeled  such  a  statue  had  he  been  here  to 
do  it.  So  the  man  whom  many  of  us  think 
the  first  of  modern  French  sculptors,  Paul 
Dubois,  is  an  Academecian  in  his  art.  He 
is  a  follower  of  the  classical  traditions  lately 
and  now  taught  in  the  French  schools;  and 
so  completely  a  follower  of  these  traditions 
that  there  are  many  who  undervalue  his 
work  on  the  express  ground  that  he  seems 
to  them  to  be  so  contented  to  live  within  the 
ancient  boundaries.  That  his  own  choice 
in  mature  life,  led  him  to  study  the  sixteenth 
century  Italians,  and  so  take  the  classical 
traditions  from  Italian  hands,  does  not  make 
him  less  academical.  He  would  be  more 
original,  more  bold,  if  he  were  to  go  delib- 
erately back  to  the  Greek  originals.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  celebrated  living  sculptor, 
Rodin,  who  is  greatly  admired  for  his  extra- 
ordinary independence  and  for  the  novelty 


THE    TORSO    BELVEDERE    (OF    HERCULES) 

//  is  ascribed  to  the  First  Century  R.  C.,  and  bears  the  signature  of  the  Athenian  Apollpnius. 
It  now  stands  in  the  Vatican,  Rome. 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


of  his  proceedings,  appears  an  inno- 
vator in  a  bad  sense,  as  one  substituting 
an  eagerly  desired  originality  for  a  loftier,  a 
more  tranquil,  a  more  perfect  standard  of 
beauty  or  of  grandeur  in  art.  And  yet 
each  of  these  powerful  and  artistic  sculptors 
models  truthfully,  has  the  human  anatomy  of 
the  external  forms  literally  at  his  fingers' 
ends,  loves  and  glories  in  the  practice  of 
fine  and  forceful  modeling,  and  could  copy 
a  living  model  as  exactly  as  he  might  choose 
to  do  it ;  only  that  he  will  never  do  that  except 
as  a  study,  to  gain  more  knowledge. 

It  is  said  of  Rodin,  and  with  unquestioned 
truth,  that,  in  an  important  statue,  he  delib- 
erately added  material  to  the  side  of  the 
body  outside  the  upper  ribs  and  under  the 
arm,  and  at  the  same  time  added  material  to 
the  upper  arm  itself  in  near  proximity  to  the 
body  as  above  described;  all  this  to  avoid 
the  apparent  lankiness  or  too  great  slender- 
ness  which  the  play  of  light  backward  and 
forward  between  the  brilliant  surfaces  of 
marble  caused  in  other  similar  cases,  or 
would  cause  in  his  own  case.  In  other  words, 
he,  with  the  boldness  of  a  great  sculptor, 
deliberately  deviated  from  what  he  knew 
was  the  usual,  the  normal,  the  truthful 
anatomy  of  the  subject,  and  gave  an  apparent 
truth  more  important  to  him  than  the  actual 
truth.  It  is  nothing  to  a  great  sculptor  that 
his  upper  arm  measures  or  does  not  measure 
exactly  that  which  a  well-chosen  model's  arm 
would  measure;  all  that  is  of  minor  impor- 
tance; what  is  important  is  the  effect  of 
beauty,  of  force,  of  expression  of  some  kind 
which  is  to  be  gained  in  many  cases  only  by 
a  deliberate  denial  of  the  mere  physical  facts. 
Of  the  same  Rodin  it  is  known  to  be  true 
that  he  had,  four  years  ago,  a  draped  figure 
to  make,  the  nude  form  of  which  figure  he 
modeled  with  the  minutest  and  most  loving 
care,  giving  to  parts  which  were  to  be 
wholly  concealed  by  the  drapery  as  much 
thought  and  time,  to  all  appearance,  as  to 
head  or  hands.  There  was  nothing  for  it 
but  to  get  perfection.  Until  it  was  abso- 
lutely well  done,  how  could  he  be  sure 
that  any  part  was  right?  But  this  right^ 
ness  may  have  been,  in  part,  a  deliberate 
exaggeration  a  frank  denial,  of  the  facts  of 
nature. 


T 


HE  ARTISTIC  TREATMENT  OF 
THE  WHOLE  AND  OF  THE 
PARTS.  (4) 


The  famous  torso  of  the  Vatican, 
the  one  that  occupies  a  small  apartment 
alone,  except  for  the  well-known  Sarcopha- 
gus of  Scipio  which  stands  against  the  wall 
behind  it,  is  regarded  by  many  persons  as 
the  ideally  perfect  piece  of  anatomy  among 
all  ancient  statuary.  It  is  not  on  this 
account  assumed  to  be  the  greatest  of  all 
ancient  statues.  It  is  so  mutilated  that  its 
original  significance  cannot  be  now  under- 
stood and,  therefore,  it  has,  and  can  have, 
no  claim  to  rank  first  or  second  or  in  any 
other  exact  place  among  the  works  of  ancient 
art.  All  we  have  of  it  is  the  amazing  fidel- 
ity to  nature  in  the  form  of  an  admirably 
perfect  male  body  of  mature  age.  Whether 
the  complete  work  was  great  or  only  able 
and  skillful  is  a  thing  which  cannot  be  settled 
in  the  absence  of  so  much  of  the  composition 
as  would  explain  its  original  significance. 
One  beauty,  however,  it  has,  apart  from  its 
"science";  it  has  the  beautifully  rounded 
and  beautifully  hollowed  and  beautifully 
flattened  surfaces  which  are  the  infallible 
mark  of  noble  sculpture.  The  perfection  of 
this,  which  is  commonly  called  "modeling," 
without  other  qualification,  is  almost  reason 
enough  to  give  the  torso  in  question  a  place 
in  the  very  front  rank  of  works  of  sculpture ; 
but  still  we  ask  the  pose,  the  attitude,  the 
whole  figure  in  its  power  and  grace,  before 
we  can  speak  decidedly  of  the  work  of  art 

Differences  exist,  too,  in  the  deliberately 
chosen  ways  of  work  of  the  men  who  are 
living  side  by  side  in  the  same  community. 
Differences  even  greater  may  exist  between 
all  the  members  of  one  school  taken  together 
and  the  members  of  another  school,  contem- 
porary but  centered,  perhaps,  in  a  different 
city.  Thus,  it  is  not  very  long  since  an  emi- 
nent sculptor,  asking  for  the  opinion  of  a 
brother  artist  (and  this  criticism  of  a  brother 
artist  is  the  only  criticism  which  an  artist 
ever  desires  or  regards)  was  met  by  a  remark 
about  a  certain  lack  of  vigor  in  the  grouping. 
The  critic  reminded  the  author  of  the  group 
that  nude  figures  engaged  in  such  and  such 
action  would  not,  as  a  matter  of  visible  fact, 


20 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


comport  themselves  in  such  and  such  ways, 
that  study  of  those  races  of  men  among 
whom  a  quasi-nudity  is  a  common  thing 
would  show  that,  plainly  enough,  the  move- 
ment and  pose  of  one  figure  would  always 


THE    FIRST    BURIAL. 

By  L.  E.  Barrias,  a  contemporary  French  sculptor,  dated  1883,  in  the  Hotel  de 
'Ville,  Paris. 


be  affected  by  the  movement  and  pose  of 
each  of  its  neighbors,  in  a  way  not  marked 
by  the  group  in  question;  and  that,  in  short, 
a  group  of  men  acting  together  or  strug- 
gling together  must  be  conceived  more  as  a 


unit  and  less  as  a  set  of  detached  figures. 
The  answer  to  this  made  by  the  sculptor 
under  criticism  was  to  the  effect  that,  in  his 
school  just  then,  they  were  caring  less  about 
those  larger  and  more  general  truths;  that 
what  they  were  caring  the 
most  about  was  the  model- 
ing of  the  minor  divisions 
of  the  body  or  of  its  surface. 
To  get  a  beautifully  modu- 
lated cheek,  with  temple 
and  eye-socket,  and  to  have 
this  modulation  pass  beau- 
tifully into  the  comparative 
flat  of  the  forehead,  and  this 
into  the  dome  of  the  cra- 
nium ;  to  model  the  shoulder 
with  truthful  and  beautiful 
massing  of  the  articulation 
at  the  shoulder  joint  and  the 
flow  of  the  lines  of  tne  up- 
per arm ;  that  such  achieve- 
ment as  this  rather  than  the 
setting  of  the  whole  body 
perfectly  upon  its  feet  and 
putting  it  with  perfect  truth- 
fulness to  nature  into  the 
appearance,  the  gesture, 
which  indicates  movement: 
that,  as  this  sculptor  con- 
fessed, was  the  demand 
'made  by  this  school  upon 
each  of  its  members.  It  is 
easy  to  see  that  there  are  as 
many  differences  of  aim 
and  of  desire  possible  in 
this  art  as  there  are  in 
poetry.  Shelley  is  not  to  be 
blamed  because  he  has  not 
the  same  purpose  in  his  art 
that  Wordsworth  or  Mil- 
ton had ;  and  in  like  manner 
the  sculptor  is  neither  to  be 
blamed  nor  praised  because 
of  the  same  fact  that  he  is 
pursuing  a  certain,  perhaps 
unusual,  line  of  work. 
It  is,  however,  proper  to  visit  with 
unfavorable  comment  the  work  of  the 
artist  who  is  too  limited  in  his  desires  and 
who  seeks  for  a  single,  probably  a  minor 
virtue  only,  and  perhaps  to  the  exclusion  of 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ART. 


21 


DISCOBOLUS. 

An  antique  copy  in    the     Vatican,  Rome   of  a  famous  statue  by 
Myron,  a   Greek  Sculptor  of  the  Fifth.  Century  B.   C. 

It  shows   the    " Discus-thrower"  at  the  moment  of  highest  ten- 
sion and,  at  the  same  time,  the  moment  of  rest. 


others.  Thus,  admirable  as  is  the  aim  pro- 
posed to  the  sculptor  by  the  school  above 
described — that  which  calls  for  the  most 
perfect  devotion  of  a  lifetime  to  the  model- 
ing of  the  smaller  surfaces,  it  will  be  found 
impossible  to  admire  heartily  works  of  sculp- 
ture which  may  possess  this  great  beauty 
and  which  yet  are  without  the  vastly  impor- 
tant merit  of  truthfulness  of  pose  and  ges- 
ture. A  standing  statue  must  stand  firm  on 
its  legs  and  must  seem  ready  to  move  in  a 
moment  from  its  standing  position,  and  that 
without  danger  of  falling.  It  will  never  do 
to  defend  a  tottering  and  feebly  composed 
statue  by  calling  attention  to  the  beauty  of 
modeling  in  the  wrists  and  ankles.  Fre- 
quently these  two  virtues  pass  one  into  the 
other  so  immediately,  so  insensibly,  that  no 


student  can  say  where  general  truth  is  left 
and  the  mere  grace  and  perfectness  of 
modeling  begins.  Thus,  if  we  are  noting  a 
statue  like  the  Discobolus,  in  which  the 
apparent  motion  of  the  figure,  its  expression 
of  vigorous  and  even  violent  effort  makes 
necessary  the  setting  of  the  feet  very  firmly 
on  the  ground,  it  will  be  observed  that  the 
toes  have  a  singularly  prehensile  or  clinging 
action,  as  if  they  were  seizing  the  ground  as 
the  hand  seizes  and  grips  the  object  which 
it  is  to  hurl.  Now,  this  modeling  of  the 
toes  to  express  the  strained,  powerful  action 
of  the  muscles  and  tension  of  all  the  sinews 
is  perfectly  compatible  with  a  most  minute 
care  for  the  rounding  of  the  surfaces. 

Indeed,  it  is  the  thing  which  the  sculptor 
enjoys  almost  beyond  everything  else,  this 
giving  lifelike  movement  or  the  appearance 
of  movement,  this  giving  of  energy,  grip, 
tension,  to  forms  which  must  still  be  ex- 
quisitely rounded  and  in  themselves  beauti- 
ful. Moreover,  the  action  suggested  for  the 
toes  cannot  exist  by  itself;  it  must  be  fol- 
lowed and  continued  by  action  seen  in  the 
muscles  of  the  calf  and  in  the  whole  position 
of  the  lower  leg;  also,  by  the  modeling  of 
the  knee-joint  and  in  certain  cases  even  by 
the  muscles  of  the  thigh, 

On  the  other  hand,  in  the  well-known 
Ilissus,  the  headless  statue  from  the  Par- 
thenon pediment  in  the  British  Museum 
(Cf.  page  22),  the  attitude  suggests  com- 
plete abandon  and  entire  repose  and  thus 
some  muscles  are  lax,  those  of  the  thigh  in 
particular  having  attracted  the  attention  of 
generations  of  students  by  their  perfect 
expression  of  soft  relaxation,  though  in  so 
powerful  a  frame.  Nor  is  the  modeling  for 
beauty  of  such  parts  as  these  in  any  way 
less  attractive  than  in  the  case  of  the  tense 
muscles  of  the  Discobolus.  In  either  case 
modeling  is  first  for  the  expression  of  the 
attitude,  the  apparent  action  of  the  figure, 
and  secondly  for  abstract  beauty:  or,  to  put 
the  case  more  truthfully,  these  are  in  the 
sculptor's  mind,  both  at  once,  and  neither 
one  without  the  other,  neither  the  expression 
of  energy  without  beauty  nor  yet  a  de- 
liberate chosen  beauty  of  curvature  with- 
out the  expression  of  the  body's  state,  vig- 
orous or  inert. 


22 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


T 


HE     PLASTER,    THE     BRONZE 
AND  THE  MARBLE.  (5) 


So  far  we  have  considered  only 
what  the  sculptor  does  in  modeling  his  figure. 
He  has  still  to  put  it  into  such  shape  that 
he  himself  can  keep  it  permanently  before 
him  and  that  the  public  or  a  selected  public 
may  see  it.  This  is  usually  done  by  making 
a  cast  in  plaster  of  Paris,  from  the  clay 
model.  If  the  work  of  art  is  a  statue,  as  we 
have  assumed,  so  far,  a  series  of  casts  are 
taken  from  its  different  parts,  which  casts 


embodied  in  the  clay.  In  the  white  mass 
which  now  replaces  the  brownish  gray  orig- 
inal, there  may,  indeed,  be  so  much  of  a 
different  aspect  given  to  this  part  and  to 
that  part  as  light  plays  upon  them,  that  the 
sculptor  willingly  accepts  some  accident  of 
the  casting  or  some  suggestions  which  the 
new  material  offers  him ;  but,  at  all  events, 
his  business  is  the  reproduction  in  the  plas- 
ter of  his  thought  as  perfect  as  it  was  in  the 
clay  model,  or,  perhaps,  in  his  present  mood, 
more  perfect  still,  as  having  been  modified 
in  accordance  with  his  latest  conceptions. 


THE   RIVER-GOD    ILISSUS. 
From  the  Parthenon,  Athens,  of  the  Fifth  Century.  B.  C. 


should  be,  when  put  together,  an  exact 
reproduction  of  the  statue.  Of  course,  there 
is  here  much  opportunity  for  slight  errors, 
and  such  errors  are,  of  course,  destructive 
of  the  sculptor's  conception  as  embodied  in 
his  own  modeling.  What  the  sculptor  has 
to  do,  then,  is,  while  rubbing  down  the 
seams  which  project  where  the  molds  come 
together  and  where  the  plaster  has  run  into 
the  grooves  between  them,  to  watch  all 
parts  of  the  plaster,  keeping  in  mind  the 
continuous  curved  and  modulated  surface  of 
his  work,  seeking  in  the  completed  cast 
complete  reproduction  of  his  idea  as  it  was 


This  plaster  thus  carefully  prepared  goes 
to  the  exhibition:  in  Paris,  to  the  great 
Salon,  where  hundreds  of  pieces  of  sculp- 
ture, large  and  small,  are  exhibited  year  by 
year.  This  plaster  is  the  sculptor's  finished 
work.  It  is  this  which  the  juries  pass  upon, 
this  which  gains  for  its  author  renown,  and, 
in  countries  where  a  wise  public  spirit  allows 
of  public  recompense  and  public  employ- 
ment to  the  able  artist,  which  gains  him 
medals,  decorations  as  of  the  Legion  of 
Honor,  and  employment  by  the  State.  The 
only  object  to  be  gained  by  putting  the 
statue  into  more  permanent  form  of  durable 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


23 


material  is  in  the  durability 
itself.  Considered  alone, 
as  a  work  of  art,  one  would 
prefer  the  plaster  to  the 
marble  or  the  bronze;  but 
as  the  plaster  cannot,  under 
ordinary  circumstances,  be 
kept  in  perfect  condition 
very  long-,  it  is  a  traditional 
process  to  copy  this  plaster 
in  marble  or  to  reproduce 
it  in  bronze. 

Those  words,  "to  copy" 
and  "to  reproduce,"  are 
used  with  deliberate  pur- 
pose. The  reproduction  in 
bronze  is  made  by  another 
casting,  the  difference  be- 
ing merely  in  the  prepara- 
tion of  a  mold  which  will 
bear  the  heat  of  the  melted 
metal,  and  the  allowing  of 
this  melted  metal  to  run 
into  this  mold  and  then  to 
harden;  after  which  it  has 
to  be  finished,  not  alone  by 
the  sculptor's  hand,  but,  as 
the  material  is  hard,  and 
files  and  specially  hardened 
tools  are  the  only  ones 
which  will  attack  it  easily, 
by  the  hands  of  workmen 
specially  trained  to  the 
work.  It  is,  however,  in  all 
cases,  the  sculptor  himself  who  must  be  re- 
sponsible for  the  final  touches  to  the  metal. 
The  bronze  may  be  set  up  in  its  original 
bright  color,  as  of  a  new  coin,  to  change  color 
gradually  by  exposure  to  the  air,  and  in 
some  cases  to  smoke,  dust,  or  other  impuri- 
ties floating  in  the  air,  or  it  may  be  at  once 
stained  such  color  as  the  sculptor  may  pre- 
fer, or,  as  is  sometimes  the  case  with  statues 
to  be  set  up  in  doors,  it  may  be  gilded.  As 
for  the  marble  copy,  it  is  a  copy  in  the  strict 
sense  of  the  word,  for  the  surfaces  are 
reproduced  by  mechanical  processes  in  a 
block  of  marble  whose  parts  are  cut  away 
carefully,  until  the  surface  of  each  part  of 
the  plaster  statue  exists  again  in  the  harder 
material.  A  curious  instrument,  which 
cannot  be  described  here,  as  it  is  very  com- 


DIANA. 
A  bronze  statue,  by  J  A.  ffoudon,  1741-1828   in  the  Louvre,  Paris. 


plicated,  enables  the  workman  to  proceed 
with  absolute  certainty,  so  far  as  mere 
mechanical  accuracy  of  measurement  is 
concerned.  The  exact  amount  of  pro- 
jection of  a  rounded  convex  part,  the 
exact  receding  of  a  hollow,  can  be  given 
by  this  instrument,  and  the  points  so  taken 
may  be  so  numerous  that  the  modulation 
of  the  surface  may  be  almost  perfectly 
reproduced.  For  the  final  modeling,  the 
sculptor  has  to  interfere,  for  although  this 
precaution  is  often  omitted,  although  the 
marble  often  goes  straight  from  the  work- 
shop to  its  permanent  place  without  care- 
ful revision  by  the  sculptor,  this  is  felt  by 
all  artists  who  care  for  their  work  to  be  a 
serious  risk  and  to  be,  in  short,  an  artistic 
mistake. 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


COLOR  IN  SCULPTURE.  (6) 
Still  considering  works  "in  the 
round,"  that  is  to  say,  statues  and 
groups,  it  is  proper  to  allude  to 
what  was  once  universal  in  art;  viz.,  the  in- 
vesting with  color  of  all  sculpture,  whether 
in  marble,  alabaster  or  wood,  of  the 
Egyptians,  of  the  Assyrians,  and  of  the 
Greeks,  from  the  earliest  times  until  the 
complete  disappearance  of  their  art  in  the 
later  Greco-Roman  school,  and  of  the  art 
of  the  Roman  Empire  before  and  at  the 
climax  of  its  power  and  splendor.  Bronze 
sculpture  commonly  had  eyes  of  another 
material  inserted  in  the  bronze  sockets, 
and  this  material  was  chosen  with  some 
reference  to  the  luster  and  even  the 
sparkle  of  the  human  eye :  moreover,  bronze 
statues  would  be  gilded  in  parts,  as  the  hair, 
and  jewels  set  in  the  ear  or  laid  about  the 
neck  and  in  the  thongs  of  the  sandals,  the 
borders  of  the  upper  garment,  and  the  like. 
The  only  exception  to  the  dictum  that  stone 
statues  w^ie  painted  is  in  the  case  of  those 
stones  which  have  themselves  great  beauty 
of  color  and  luster.  Thus,  the  earliest 
Egyptian  work,  of  diorite,  of  basalt,  of  red 
granite,  might  or  might  not  be  partly  col- 
ored; the  beauty  of  the  material,  its  rarity, 
and  the  pride  the  workman  felt  in  having 
subdued  such  hard  and  resistant  material  to 
his  purposes  removing  the  otherwise  natural 
desire  to  paint  it.  So,  among  the  Romans 
of  a  later  time,  the  fancy  for  portrait  busts 
in  which  the  draped  shoulders  and  torso 
were  worked  in  some  precious  Oriental 
stone,  and  the  head  alone  in  white  marble — 
the  head  being  set  into  the  receptacle  left 
for  it  in  the  carved  mass  of  the  draped 
shoulders — seems  to  have  replaced  the  earlier 
disposition  to  use  the  paint  brush.  At  what 
period  white  statues  weie  turned  out  by  the 
sculptor  and  left  unpainted  has  not  been 
ascertained,  for,  while  statues  as  late  as  the 
reign  of  Tiberius  are  known  to  have  been 
painted  in  all  their  parts,  it  is  suspected  that 
others,  even  of  the  same  reign,  were  left 
unpainted ;  the  taste  for  the  unaided  model- 
ing, the  unassisted  sculptor-work,  seeming 
to  begin  almost  with  the  consolidation  of 
the  Empire. 


No  one  should  suppose,  however,  that 
this  painting  was  done  with  any  idea  of 
imitating  life.  The  painting  was  done 
with  the  view  of  adding  to  the  vigor,  the 
expressiveness,  of  the  statue.  The  cus- 
tom of  painting  grew  up  with  the  custom  of 
using  sculpture  in  close  connection  with  a 
building,  which  building  itself  was  painted 
in  all  its  parts.  So,  in  the  Egyptian  gate- 
way-towers, covered  with  historical  and 
devotional  reliefs,  and  in  the  frieze  of  the 
Parthenon,  the  painting  of  the  relief  sculp- 
ture was  carried  out  on  the  same  lines  as 
the  painting  of  the  rest  of  the  building. 
The  dark  corners  were  in  this  way  lighted 
up ;  to  sculpture  in  places  above  the  eye  or 
otherwise  too  nearly  inaccessible,  was  given 
an  added  vigor,  and  the  whole  work,  once 
perfectly  well  rendered,  so  far  as  form  goes, 
was  then  helped  to  produce  the  desired  ulti- 
mate effect  by  the  afterthought,  so  to  speak, 
of  the  painter  acting  in  harmony  with  the 
sculptor  himself.  From  this  to  the  statues 
of  the  pediment  and  the  statues  of  the  inte- 
rior the  extension  of  the  practice  of  painting 
was  not  only  easy  but  was  inevitable.  The 
statues  of  the  interior,  half  hidden  in  the 
dusk  and  gloom  of  the  sanctuary  were 
painted  in  order  to  make  them  more  easily 
comprehensible ;  their  parts  were  not  hidden 
nor  their  modeling  concealed  nor  their  con- 
ception as  to  form  overlaid  by  this  added 
grace,  but  all  the  painting  was  done  with 
the  deliberate  purpose,  usually  successful, — 
as  we  must  believe  when  we  are  dealing 
with  a  race  so  faultless  in  tact  and  taste  as 
the  Greeks — of  calling  attention  to  the 
sculptor's  work  and  of  making  it  more  im- 
pressive. 

The  stories  we  have  about  the  chrys- 
elephantine statues,  such  as  that  of  Zeus 
in  the  Temple  at  Olympia  and  that  of 
Athena  in  the  Parthenon  at  Athens,  we  can 
only  understand  by  carefiil  reading  of  the 
brief  texts  which  describe  them,  and  by  com- 
parison of  these  texts  with  the  painted 
statues  which  remain  to  us.  The  inference 
drawn  by  all  archaeologists  with  regard  to 
those  famous  works  is  that  upon  a  skeleton 
of  metal  and  a  thin  hollow  shell  also,  proba- 
bly, of  metal,  a  sculptured  surface  was 
applied;  this  surface  being  of  ivory  for  the 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


nude  parts  and  of  enameled  metal  (partly, 
at  least,  of  gold)  for  the  drapery  and  orna- 
ments. In  the  case  of  the  Olympian  Zeus 
the  pedestal  seems  also  to  have  been  a 
marvel  of  polychromatic  adornment,  with 
elaborate  figure-sculptures  in  relief.  But 
smaller  statues,  whose  decoration  was 
applied  by  the  paint  brush,  are  not  at  all 
unfamiliar  to  modern  students.  In  the 
excavations  made  on  the  top  of  the  Acrop- 
olis rock  at  Athens  several  painted  statues 
were  found  in  1883,  and  a  much  larger  num- 
ber in  1886,  and  while  these  have  greatly 
enlarged  our  knowledge  and  increased  our 
understanding  of  those  early  processes  of 
art,  they  have  done  no  more  than  confirm 
what  previous  discoveries  had  made  clear. 
The  Acropolis  statues  must  have  been  thrown 
down  during  the  Persian  invasion  of  Greece, 
in  480  B.  C.  ;  they  were  then  heaped  together 
to  aid  in  the  filling  up  of  a  hollow  on  the 
rock,  the  Athenians  engaged  in  rebuilding 
after  the  Persians  had  departed  having  evi- 
dently but  little  care  for  these  earlier  and 
once  sacred  works  of  art,  now  that  they  had 
been  polluted  by  the  enemy,  thrown  down 
and  shattered,  or  at  least  marred  by  violence. 
The  most  elaborately  finished  of  these 
statues  have  the  waved  or  rippled  hair 
lying  on  the  back  painted  in  a  color  which 
suggests  the  former  application  of  gold: 
they  have  the  wrinkled  and  crape-like 
undergarment,  where  it  shows,  painted 
blue  or  green,  the  outer  garment  painted 
with  the  most  elaborate  patterns,  having, 
perhaps,  a  border  five  inches  wide,  made  up 
of  three  or  four  members  and  a  sowing  or 
sprinkle  of  figures  not  unlike  those  of  much 
more  recent  woven  draperies.  It  is  evident 
that  in  all  this  the  actual  dress  of  a  period — 
the  period  in  which  they  were  made  or  a 
just-preceding  one — was  somewhat  closely 
followed,  and  that  even  the  patterns  of  the 
stuff  are  reproduced  in  color.  So  far  there 
is  realism,  there  is,  one  might  say,  imitation 
of  nature,  but  the  application  of  all  this  to 
the  somewhat  archaic  figure  is  so  obviously 
for  effect's  sake  that  no  one  viewing  these 
treasures  of  antiquity  would  suspect  them  of 
being  of  less  ideal  importance  than  even  the 
great  gold  -  and  -  ivory  statues  themselves. 
In  fact,  each  and  every  one  of  these  was  a 


votive  statue,  whether  it  stood  out  of  doors 
with  a  temporary  canopy  over  it,  or  whether 
it  was  placed  for  better  safe-keeping  under 
the  roof  of  some  colonnade,  some  portico 
attached  to  the  shrine,  or  whether  it  stood 
at  one  side  of  the  sacred  interior. 

Modern  applications  of  painting  to  sculp- 
ture have  been  so  few  and  so  tentative  that 
they  need  hardly  concern  us  at  present.  The 
student  of  sculpture  should  remember, 
however,  that  the  art  of  form  in  antiquity 
was  not  conceived  by  those  who  made  it  and 
by  those  for  whom  it  was  made  as  an  uncol- 
ored  and,  in  that  sense,  abstract  form.  The 
lesson  to  be  learned  from  this  truth  is  the 
valuable  one  that  fine  art,  as  we  know  it, 
has  grown  up  out  of  the  desire  for  decora- 
tive effect  far  more  than  from  any  desire  to 
imitate  or  even  to  represent  the  actions  of 
living  men.  Both  of  these  natural  instincts 
of  man  were  present  and  active  when  art 
was  first  begun,  but  the  decorative  instinct 
soon  carried  it  over  the  longing  to  represent 
or  to  reproduce,  and  the  artist  of  ancient 
times,  like  the  artist  of  to-day,  was  prima- 
rily in  all  his  thoughts  and  in  all  his  labors, 
an  artist :  that  is  to  say,  a  producer  of  works 
of  character,  of  dignity  or  gentleness,  of 
vigor  or  beauty,  aiming  at  artistic  results 
and  caring  little  what  the  public  think  of 
his  meaning  which,  as  he  feels,  he  can 
hardly  hope  to  explain  to  them.  It  is  the 
normal  frame  of  mind  of  the  artist  at  work 
to  think  only  of  the  artistic  task  before  him, 
Patriotism  or  piety  or  a  desire  to  please  the 
whim  of  an  employer  or  to  catch  the  public 
eye  may  have  determined  the  choice  of  his 
subject,  but  once  at  work,  the  modeling 
tools  and  the  practiced  hand  obey  the  one 
impulse,  the  impulse  to  realize  in  visible 
form  the  great  and  as  yet  only  half-seen 
conception  of  the  creative  brain.  Now  the 
conception  of  the  Greek  sculptor's  brain  was 
a  colored  one:  to  him,  as  Mr.  La  Farge 
points  out,  the  work  to  be  done  was  in  form 
invested  with  color.  The  thought  of  the 
modern  artist  is  in  form  alone;  and  there 
are  grave  questions  connected  with  that 
divergence  of  aim. 

It  is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  as  statues 
left  the  sacred  place,  the  temple  and  its 
neighborhood,  to  be  placed,  as  the  Romans 


26 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


placed  them,  in  the  public  square  and  the 
private  hall  of  reception,  the  disposition  to 
paint  the  statue  began  to  disappear.  If, 
however,  this  disappearance  of  polychromy 
be  traceable  to  the  use  of  sculpture  for 
the  decoration  of  the  city  or  of  the  villa, 
it  seems  probable  that  this  influence  was 
not  direct  but  secondary  in  a  sense:  it 
seems  that  the  less  brilliantly  colored  sur- 
roundings bade  the  artist  leave  his  statue 
less  vigorously  colored  in  itself.  Those  of 
us  who  have  noticed  a  modern  white  marble 


if  the  statue  were  to  be  painted  judiciously, 
it  would  be  a  prodigious  help  to  the  flat 
panels  and  canvases  around.  It  is,  then, 
our  modern  custom  of  picking  up  works  of 
art  one  by  one,  trundling  them  off  into 
private  houses  here  or  elsewhere,  and  set- 
ting them  up  casually  in  court  rooms  or 
halls  of  legislation  which  has  caused  the 
separation  between  the  arts,  and  which  has 
bade  the  colorist  keep  to  his  flat  surfaces, 
while  the  sculptor  gets  no  aid  from  him  in 
the  completion  of  his  work  of  form. 


S 


CULPTURE 
LIEF.  (7) 


IN     RE- 


THE    LOGGIA    DEI    LANZI,    FLORENCE,    ITALY. 

This  is  a  portico  opening  on  to  a  great  square^  and  containing  many 
famous  statues. 


statue  in  a  gallery  filled  with  pictures  hav- 
ing some  beauty  of  color,  as  in  this  or  that 
room  of  our  museums,  will  have  observed 
how  badly  it  fits  its  surroundings.  None 
but  a  very  refined  piece  of  modeling  will 
bear,  without  the  most  serious  injury  given 
and  received,  the  neighborhood  of  works  of 
vigorous  color.  The  more  highly  refined  is 
the  modeling  of  any  white  statue,  the  less  it 
is  injured  and  the  less  it  injures  its  sur- 
roundings, and  this  evidently  because  of  the 
subtlety  of  the  delicate  grays  with  which 
nature  stands  ready  to  invest  the  smoothly- 
modulated  surfaces  of  the  marble  or  plaster. 
But  it  is  safer  to  keep  the  white  statue  out 
of  the  picture  gallery.  On  the  other  hand, 


Hitherto  we  have  con- 
sidered rather  the  statue 
or  group  of  statues  than  that 
sculpture  which  is  raised  or  re- 
lieved from  a  continuous  sur- 
face ;  but  this  latter  is  still  the 
most  important,  on  the  whole. 
The  museums  of  Athens  are 
the  richest  in  Europe  in  spec- 
imens of  Greek  sculpture  of 
supreme  excellence;  and  yet 
there  are  but  few  statues  in 
them:  the  Roman  conquerors 
took  care  of  that!  Egyptian, 
Assyrian,  Persian,  Greek,  Gre- 
co-Roman, Romanesque  and 
Gothic  architecture,  the  build- 
ings of  India  and  Japan  and 
Central  America,  the  structures 
of  the  classical  Renaissance  of  the  fifteenth 
century  and  of  its  resulting  styles  in  all  parts 
of  Europe — all  of  these  are  what  they  are 
largely  because  of  their  sculptured  friezes, 
panels,  pilasters  and  larger  wall  surfaces. 
And  all  of  this  vast  mass  of  sculpture  is  in 
relief.  There  is  a  solid  background  to  it, 
from  which  the  sculptor's  modeling  grows 
out.  It  is  not  stuck  on;  it  is  not  a  thing 
apart,  either  in  conception  or  in  make ;  it  is 
the  solid  substance  gathered  up,  here  and 
there,  into  forms  which  are  more  refined 
and  significant  than  those  of  moldings,  or 
those  of  balls,  billets  and  diamond-points. 

There    are,    indeed,    the    exceptional    in- 
stances of  such  work  as,  being  composed  of 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


29 


PANEL    FROM    DOOR    OF   THE    FLORENCE    BAPTISTERY. 
Out  of  the  ten  panels  this  one  represents  Abraham 's  entertainment  of  the  angels,  and  the  attempted  sacrifice  of  Isaac. 


diverse  materials,  is  actually  carved  or 
embossed  in  separate  pieces  and  applied  to 
its  background.  Such  was  the  frieze  of  the 
Erechtheum  at  Athens:  marble  figures 
applied  to  a  darker  marble  ground.  Such 
is  that  wonderful  ceiling  by  La  Farge  in  a 
New  York  dwelling  house,  where  wood, 
marble  and  ivory  carvings,  metal  emboss- 
ings of  half  a  dozen  colors,  mother-of-pearl, 
cast  blue  glass  and  red  coral  were  all  used 
in  one  great  composition.  But  even  in 
these  cases  the  design,  the  artist's  thought, 
the  original  modeling,  have  been  such  as 
would  come  naturally  to  the  artist  with  a 
flat  surface  of  soft  material  before  him, 
which  he  proposes  to  dig  into,  here,  and  to 
pile  up,  there,  until  the  flatness  is  much 
modified,  shaped  and  wrought  into  some- 
thing very  interesting  indeed.  In  the  most 
elaborate  work  there  may  remain  no  flatness 
anywhere  visible.  Thus,  in  the  famous 


Ghiberti  doors  of  the  Florence  Baptistery 
(those  of  the  Eastern  doorway)  there  is  here 
and  there  a  really  flat  surface  which  stands 
for  the  sky;  but,  everywhere  else,  near  fig- 
ures are  relieved  upon  more  distant  figures, 
those  upon  mountain  forms  or  groves  of 
trees  or  the  tents  of  the  army;  or  else  some 
elaborate  piece  of  architecture  fills  nearly 
the  whole  panel  above  and  around  the  prin- 
cipal human  subject.  On  the  other  hand, 
Luca  della  Robbia's  noble  doors,  those  with 
eight  panels  which  open  to  let  you  into  the 
Sacristy  in  the  Cathedral  of  Florence,  have 
the  figures  relieved  upon  a  flat  table  of 
bronze;  and  their  formality  is  extreme: 
always  a  central  figure  seated,  and  two 
smaller  ones  erect,  and  only  small  accesso- 
ries beyond  these.  Donatello's  doors  in  San 
Lorenzo  of  Florence  are  still  more  simple: 
two  figures  to  each,  and  the  backgrounds  of 
these  are  flat  again,  as  flat  as  the  level .  sur- 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


A    METOPE    FROM    THE    PARTHENON,    ATHENS 
Combat  between  Greek  and  Centaur. 


face  of  a  medal,  but,  like  the  medal,  back- 
ground and  figures  form  parts  of  one  design. 
The  same  great  sculptor's  pulpit  at  Prato 
has  the  panels  so  filled  with  singing  and 
music-making  child-angels  that  there  is  no 
background  at  all.  Here  and  there  only, 
in  the  groups,  could  your  finger  find  place 
between  the  heads  and  wings,  or  the  feet 
and  floating  robes,  and  touch  some  marble 
beyond,  which  was  not  carved  into  a  sem- 
blance of  life. 

In  Greek  sculpture  the  same  differences 
are  found:  and,  in  the  Parthenon  itself,  the 
metopes  and  the  frieze  of  the  naos,  though 


probably  of  the  same  epoch  and  produced 
under  the  same  influences,  show  radical 
differences,  very  similar  to  those  named 
above  in  the  case  of  the  Italian  examples. 
The  metopes  are  nearly  square  blocks  of 
marble,  from  which  emerge  the  bodies  of 
centauis  and  men  in  relief  so  high  that  the 
heads  and  arms  are  sometimes  disengaged 
wholly  from  the  block.  The  long  slabs  of 
the  naos-frieze  are  occupied  with  mounted 
men,  chariots  and  horses,  figures  on  foot  of 
old  men,  young  men  and  maidens;  and  here 
the  relief  seems  high  for  a  man's  head  and 
low  for  the  body  of  a  horse.  For,  as  the 
whole  slab  is  forty  inches  high,  a  man's 
head  may  be  five  inches  in  greatest  dimen- 
sion; and  its  relief  of  an  inch  and  a  quarter 
for  a  profile,  or  two  inches  for  a  full-faced 
head  which  seems  to  bow  forward  and  out 
of  the  plane,  is  indeed  high  relief;  while 
giving  the  four  legs  of  a  prancing  horse  and 
details  of  his  body  within  a  space  three  feet 
square  and  with  a  relief  of  an  inch  and  a 
quarter  has  involved  in  it  all  the  serious 
problems  of  very  flat  relief.  In  fact,  the 
difficulties  overcome  have  been  prodigious; 
nor  does  the  student  see,  at  first,  through 
the  mask  of  divine  serenity  and  consummate 
ordering,  the  variety,  the  play,  the  master- 
ful grasp  of  the  subject,  and  the  astonishing 
technical  skill  which  has  gone  to  those  five 
hundred  feet  of  crowded  composition.  And 
to  think  that  this  marvelously  perfect  mod- 
eling had  still  to  be  made  up  with  arms, 
trappings,  and  wreaths  of  bronze,  with 


SECTION    FROM    THE    FRIEZE    OF    THE    PARTHENON,    ATHENS. 
Part  of  the  procession  at  the  Panathenaea. 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ART. 


painting,    and   even    with    details   executed 
wholly  by  the  paintbrush ! 

With  the  Roman  work  we  cannot  linger; 
and  yet  the  general  neglect  of  that  noble 
relief -sculpture  of  Trajan's  time  and  Hadri- 
an's makes  the  regret  for  this  prohibition 
the  greater.  The  arch  of  Trajan  at  Bene- 
vento  is  for  some  of  us  the  finest  piece  of 
architectural  sculpture  between  the  XVIII 
Dynasty  of  Egypt  and  Rheims  Cathedral. 
The  unmatched  sculpturesque  sense  of  the 
Greeks  has  impressed  our  archaeologists  so 
much  that  they  have  hardly  settled  down  to 
work  upon  the  Roman  monuments  as  yet, 
monuments  less  rich  in  the  highest  qualities 
of  pure  sculpture,  but  not  to  be  surpassed  in 
the  combination  which  goes  to  make  up  that 
rare  achievement  of  man,  a  great 
building  beautifully  adorned. 


D 


IVERSE  AND  EVEN 
CONTRARY  WAYS  OF 
WORKING  AMONG 
SCULPTORS.  (8) 


There  are  still  to  be  noted 
those  radically  different  ways 
of  work  which  the  student  finds  to 
interest  and  to  puzzle  him:  differ- 
ent ways  leading  to  different  re- 
sults, the  many  aspects  of  art,  the 
many  forms  of  multiform  truth. 
The  books  are  full  of  stories  of 
Michelangelo  attacking  the  marble  himself 
with  chisel  and  mallet.  It  appears  to  be  true 
that  even  in  this  great  man's  time  it  was  not 
very  strange  to  see  an  artist  of  fame,  and  sur- 
rounded by  those  who,  for  pay  or  for  educa- 
tion, would  have  done  his  heavy  work  for 
him,  still  cutting  away  the  outside  of  a  block 
until,  as  he  himself  expressed  it,  he  came  to 
the  form  concealed  within  it,  and  of  which 
he  was  in  search.  In  the  middle  of  the  six- 
teenth century  it  was  already  noted  as 
unusual  that  such  a  sculptor  should  work  the 
marble  so  habitually  himself.  But  it  was 
rather  for  the  boldness  and  unhesitating  di- 
rectness of  his  work  than  for  the  novelty  of 
the  proceeding  that  it  appears  to  have  excited 
remark.  It  has  been  well  said  that  Buonar- 
roti's practice  seems  to  have  been  to  make 


a  small  model  with  great  care  and  minute- 
ness and  then,  with  this  model  before  him, 
to  go  at  the  marble  block  with  his  tools, 
trusting  to  his  eye  and  to  the  trained  hand, 
which  is  almost  like  a  seeing  organ  in  itself, 
to  keep  him  from  the  accidents  natural  to 
his  headlong  and  straightforward  work. 
This  practice,  which  was,  perhaps,  growing 
rare  in  the  sixteenth  century — this  practice 
of  the  artist  himself  working  the  stone  with- 
out even  a  full-size  model — was  undoubtedly 
an  inheritance  from  the  European  Middle 
Ages.  The  sculptors  of  the  astonishing 
portal  statues  of  Rheims,  of  Chartres,  of 
Paris  and  of  Bourges,  must  be  thought  to 
have  worked  in  the  same  manner.  That  is 
a  clever  modern  painting  which  shows  a 


SPHINX    FROM    THE    SERAPEUM,    MEMPHIS. 

(Cf.  page  32) 


monk  carving  the  horizontally  placed  statue 
which  we  call  a  gargoyle — that  is  to  say,  a 
water-spout  for  the  rain  gutters  of  a  church 
— in  imitation  of  his  brother  monk,  who  is 
posed  in  an  attitude  similar  to  that  desired 
by  the  sculptor.  The  one  monk  is  copying 
the  other,  in  short,  working  with  mallet  and 
chisel  directly  upon  the  stone  block.  It  is, 
however,  improbable  that  the  work  pro- 
ceeded just  in  that  way,  though  one  such 
incident  may  have  occurred  during  the  long 
stretch  of  magnificent  work  which  we  call 
Gothic  architecture.  Commonly  the  Gothic 
buildings  were  not  erected,  nor  were  they 
adorned,  by  monks.  Commonly  the  artist 
was  too  much  of  an  artist  (as  his  work  most 
plainly  shows)  to  seek  to  copy  any  living 
figure  without  serious  change ;  and  although 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


such  changes  are  possible  as  one  works  with 

the  living  model  before  him,  they  would  be 

more  likely  to  prove  successful  if    carried 

out  under  other  conditions.  There 

is  no  evidence,  but  it  is  in  every 


LION    IN    BRONZE. 


way  probable,  that  the  medieval  artist  made 
his  small  model  in  wax  or  in  plastic  earth  of 
some  kind,  making  this  from  the  life  if  you 
please ;  and  that  then  the  sandstone  or  the 
limestone  was  cut  more  at  leisure  by  the 
man  who  had  no  comrade  in  an  uneasy  posi- 
tion begging  that  the  work  might  be  hurried 
and  he  released. 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  great  would  be  the 
divergence  between  the  work  of  the  medie- 
val artist,  a  member  of  a  small,  poor,  un- 
learned community,  with  but  the  bishop 
and  canons  of  the  cathedral,  and,  perhaps, 
a  sagacious  burgher  or  two  for  all  his  audi- 
ence— and  the  heir  of  the  ages,  Buonarroti. 
Even  when  their  way  of  working  was  so 
similar,  their  results  would  differ,  not  in 
merit,  but  in  the  kind  of  merit.  Now  con- 
sider the  difference  between  either  of  these 
artists  and  the  workingmen  who  cut  the 
granite  sphinxes  and  lions  which  form  long 
avenues  from  the  sacred  Nile  to  the  pylon 
of  this  temple  and  that  in  mighty  Thebes. 
The  beast  is  seven  feet  long  and  weighs 
four  tons,  perhaps,  but  he  is  cut  as  a  Japan- 
ese carver  cuts  a  netzuke  out  of  crystal :  that 
is  to  say,  there  is  an  abstraction  of  the 
idea  "lion,"  a  choosing  of  a  very  few  simple 
curves  and  a  few  very  much  undivided  sur- 
faces, which  curves  and  surfaces  are  all  that 
the  poor  slave  who  plies  the  tool  can  give, 


but  which  are  all  that  is  needed.  The  lion 
lives  in  them,  in  other  sort  than  as  the  same 
spirit  appears  in  the  hairy  creatures  of  the 
Nelson  monument.  How,  in  detail,  was  it 
done?  Did  the  skilled  priest  model  the 
creature,  full-size,  in  Nile  mud,  and 
then  try  his  workmen  on  the  copy, 
once  and  again,  till  a  model  simple 
enough  and  men  skillful  enough 
were  finally  brought  together? 
At  all  events  neither  the  cin- 
quecento  Italian  nor  the  thir- 
teenth century  French- 
man (so  far  as  we  know) 
could  have  done  so 
much  with  so  little  de- 
tail. 

This  power  and  this 
habit  of  abstraction  are 
as     noticeable    in    the 
Egyptian  figure    sculp- 
ture of   the  highest  class    as   in  the  wholly 
decorative    beasts    and    birds  of  the   great 
avenues  and  pylons.      No  man  knows  what 
is   archaic   Egyptian    art;    that    has    never 


THE    SHEIKH-EL-BELED    OR    VILLAGE    MAGISTRATE. 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


33 


been  identified.  The  earliest  statuary,  that 
of  the  Fourth  Dynasty,  is  as  realistic  as 
that  of  the  Japanese  a  hundred  years  ago; 
and  yet,  through  all  the  realism — the  care- 
ful study  of  human  pose,  human  gesture  and 
human  facial  expression,  there  is  a  singular 
severity  of  outline  evidently  coming  from 
the  recognized  processes  of  the  sculptor's 
art.  The  magnificent  sphinx  in  pink  gran- 
ite, which  seems  to  fill,  by  itself  one  of  the 
ground-floor  rooms  of  the  Louvre,  includes 
a  study  of  the  head  and  the  expression  of 
eyes  and  mouth  with  which  every  student 
of  that  most  interesting  subject,  the  human 
face  and  its  renderings,  must  reckon  if  he 
would  not  be  found  ignorant.  The  lime- 
stone statue  of  the  Burden  Bearer  in  the 
Boulak  Museum,  the  Cross  Legged  Scribe  of 
the  Louvre,  and  the  incredible  wooden 
statue  also  in  the  Louvre  and  known  by  the 
generally  -  accepted  name,  The  Sheikh-el- 
Beled,  are  all  of  them  studies  of  life  and  not 
of  hieratic  ceremonial.  Even  the  gray 
granite  figure,  of  a  much  later  time,  which, 
with  its  knees  out,  its  chin,  and  its  arms 
crossed  and  resting  upon  the  knees,  is  indi- 
cated rather  than  carved  in  the  polished 
block  of  granite — even  that  strange,  almost 
cubical  mass  contains  more  of  the  pose  of 
the  living  creature  than  the  statues  of  our 
time  generally  secure.  With  its  almost 
globular  head  crowning  its  almost  cubical 
mass  it  is  certainly  the  oddest  as  it  is  one  of 
the  most  powerful  pieces  of  sculpture  on 
earth.  It  is  only  three  feet  high  and  the 
flat  front  of  it  between  the  knees  bears  a 
hieroglyphic  inscription  in  three  lines,  but 
it  is  realistic  sculpture  still. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  statues  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  even  those  of  the  French 
school  of  that  time,  which  was  the  only 
school  then  alive  in  Europe,  are  realistic  in 
appearance  only,  while  they  are  perfunctory 
and  mannered  in  their  essence.  No  sculp- 
ture of  that  time  is  visible  in  this  country, 
and  in  Europe  it  is  less  studied  as  yet  than 
it  deserves.  There  are  great  things  in  it. 
Pigalle's  "Mercury"  is  a  marvelous  achieve- 
ment; and  there  are  nowhere  portrait  busts 
more  interesting  than  those  of  1750,  and 
thereabout.  But  when  the  notions  of  dra- 
pery of  that  epoch  are  compared  with  what 


the  Greeks  meant  by  drapery — the  Greeks 
and  their  more  immediate  followers  and 
students,  ancient  and  modern — it  appears  at 
once  that  the  sculptor  of  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years  ago  thought,  in  abstract  composi- 
tion such  as  that  of  folds  of  stuff,  in  a  way 
so  different  from  that  which  we  have  learned 
from  the  Greeks  to  believe  dignified  that 
the  artist  and  we  can  no  longer  understand 
each  other.  The  powerful  monument  of 
Marshall  Saxe  in  the  Church  of  Saint 
Thomas  in  Strasburg  has  the  banners  of  the 
Empire  thrown  down  and  the  banners  of 
France  raised  aloft,  the  drapery  of  the  figure 
of  Death,  of  the  cerecloth,  and  of  the  weep- 
ing Genius  of  France,  all  much  in  evidence 
and  forming  together  the  most  important 
masses  of  the  design.  And  yet  all  these 
representations  of  textile  fabrics  are  not 
draped  but  tumbled,  they  are  creased,  they 
are  tossed  about,  they  are  crushed ;  there  is 
no  word  for  them  quite  so  appropriate  as  the 
old  New  York  word  "mussed. "  The  same 
character  of  drapery  is  to  be  seen  in  the 
engraved  book  illustrations  of  the  time,  in 
those  extraordinary  prints  from  the  engrav- 
ings of  Moreau  and  Eisen  which  illustrate 
our  livres  a  vignettes.  It  is  also  to  be  seen 
in  the  later  things,  in  the  bust  of  the  dram- 
atist Rotrou  by  Caffieri,  in  the  marvelous 
Moliere  of  Houdon,  both  in  the  Theatre 
Fran^ais,  at  least  up  to  the  time  of  the 
recent  conflagration ;  and  it  is  seen  equally 
in  the  statue  of  Louis  XIV  by  Gilles  Gue"rin, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  epoch  we  are  con- 
sidering, and  in  the  famous  portrait  statue 
of  the  Due  de  Richelieu.  In  this  there  is 
realism  in  the  way  of  excess,  in  the  way  of 
exaggeration  of  curve,  of  rounded  masses, 
of  projections  and  hollows,  of  light  and 
shade.  There  is  realism  of  intended  adher- 
ence to  natural  form ;  but  for  that  which  a 
more  serious  school  would  have  thought  the 
higher  truths  (natural  truths  or  artistic,  it 
is  one  and  the  same  in  the  present  sense  of 
the  word)  there  is  negation.  For  instance, 
the  famous  statue  of  Milo  with  his  fingers 
caught  in  the  oak  and  attacked  by  the  beasts, 
gives  us  a  pose  absolutely  inconceivable — a 
vast  and  powerful  frame  expressing  by  no 
one  of  its  characteristics,  by  no  gesture,  by 
the  play  of  no  one  muscle,  by  nothing  in  all 


34 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


that  language  of  the  body  which  the  student 
of  sculpture  comes  to  know  so  well,  nothing 
of  the  horror  and  anguish  of  the  defeated 
and  despairing  giant. 


P 


AINTING    AND    ITS    KINDRED 

ARTS.  (9) 


The  art  of  painting  is  the  art  of 
giving  on  a  flat  surface  the  colored 
look  of  external  things.  This  art  is  not 
simple,  like  sculpture,  it -is  almost  infinitely 
varied.  It  affects  sculpture  as  we  have  seen, 
though  not  very  far;  and  sculpture  may 
modify  painting,  though  not  very  much. 

Painting  in  itself  is,  first,  of  many  and 
varied  kinds;  second,  it  has  close  alliances 
with  other  arts;  third,  it  is  made  up  of 
processes  and  expedients,  successively  used 
to  produce  a  result.  Sculpture  is  modeling, 
and  need  be  nothing  else,  even  in  very  high 
reaches  indeed.  Painting  is  much  more 
complex. 

First,  it  is  of  many  kinds:  Oil  Painting 
is  the  putting  on  of  pigments  mixed  with 
oil  and  with  something  else  which  helps  the 
mass  to  dry  rather  promptly,  as  oil  alone 
would  not  do:  Distemper,  or  Tempera,  is 
putting  on  colors  with  something  sticky,  as 
glue  or  white  of  egg  or  juice  of  fruits,  or 
gum,  or  a  mixture.  Water  Color,  or  Aqua- 
relle, is  laying  liquid  color,  the  water  being 
nearly  pure,  but  usually  having  a  little  gum 
dissolved  in  it.  Fresco  Painting  is  water 
color  modified  by  having  lime  dissolved  in 
the  water,  and  by  being  put  upon  a  surface 
of  wet  plaster.  Fresco  Secco,  or  Calcimine, 
or  Kalsomine,  is  again  water  color  with 
more  lime  in  it  and  laid  on  dry  plaster. 
Water-Glass,  or  Soluble  Glass  painting  is 
also  water  color  on  dry  plaster,  secured  after 
its  completion  either  by  spraying  or  light 
brushing  with  a  solution  of  silex — really  a 
liquid  glass.  Encaustic  Painting  is  done 
with  wax  dissolved  in  alcohol  and  is  fixed  or 
fastened  by  melting  the  wax  as  it  hardens, 
the  heat  being  brought  near  the  surface  by 
hot  irons.  Pastel  Painting  is  done  with  dry 
powdered  color,  rubbed  into  paper  by  mere 
friction.  Lacquer  Painting  is  done  with 
different  resinous  substances,  chief  of  which 


is  the  sap  of  R/nis  Vernicefera,  used  in 
Japan ;  Tapestry  Painting  is  the  application 
of  liquid  stains  to  the  surface  of  a  woven 
fabric,  usually,  though  not  of  necessity, 
done  in  direct  imitation  of  tapestry. 

Second,  kindred  arts  are  Enameling,  in 
which  the  color  is  in  the  form  of  glass  which 
is  ground  fine,  then  put  on  with  some  glu- 
tinous liquid,  then  heated  so  hot  as  to  melt 
and  afterward  harden  again.  Keramic 
Painting,  which  is  done  with  pigments 
which  change  in  color  and  are  also  fixed  by 
being  heated  strongly  Inlaying,  which  is 
the  letting  into  one  surface  of  other  materi- 
als, wood,  metal,  ivory,  stone,  or  glass. 
Mosaic,  which  is  the  building  up  of  a  sur- 
face with  small  pieces  of  different  colors. 
What  is  called  "Stained  Glass,"  or  the  mak- 
ing of  windows  by  means  of  a  translucent 
mosaic.  Incrustation,  which  is  a  modifica- 
tion of  Inlaying,  where  things  already  made, 
as  disks  of  mosaic  or  enamel,  or  bits  of 
sculpture,  are  let  into  a  surface.  Tapestry, 
in  which  little  bunches  of  colored  thread  are 
slowly  put  into  place  on  a  set  of  stout 
twines,  and  the  whole  shaved  down  on  the 
surface  afterward.  The  gilding  and  color- 
ing of  Leather,  which  is  almost  painting, 
and  the  combining  of  differently  colored 
metals,  which  is  a  complex  mechanical  art, 
as  the  surface  of  any  one  piece  of  metal  may 
be  altered  in  color,  while  the  number  of 
alloys  alone  is  indefinitely  great. 

Third,  preparatory  or  subsidiary  arts  are 
Drawing  with  the  line  and  with  tints,  and 
this  is  done  with  lead-pencil,  charcoal,  black 
chalk,  sauce,  or  crayon  contt,  which  are 
forms  of  carbon,  with  sanguine  or  red  chalk, 
with  a  hard  point  producing  slightly  incised 
lines,  with  the  sharp  tool,  engraving  or 
incising  deeper  lines  in  a  hard  surface,  with 
a  less  sharp  tool  driven  by  light  blows,  as  in 
chasing,  with  any  liquid  pigment  (india  ink, 
sepia  or  bistre  most  often)  as  in  water- 
color  painting,  with  the  hot  iron  which 
burns  its  way  into  wood,  and  with  white 
chalk  on  a  dark  surface,  the  lights  being  put 
on,  not  the  darks.  And  besides  all  this 
there  are  the  results  of  drawing,  the  Litho- 
graph, printed  off  from  a  drawing  in  greasy 
crayon;  the  Print  from  an  Engraving,  in 
one  of  its  many  forms  (etching,  dry-point, 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ART. 


35 


line-engraving,  stipple,  wood  -  engraving, 
mezzotint,  aquatint) ;  and  the  special  kinds 
of  drawing  necessary  for  the  modern  repro- 
ductions by  photography  and  kindred  proc- 
esses. Yes,  painting  and  its  allied  arts  are 
enough  to  occupy  the  student! 

It  is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  all  these 
arts  are  near  akin.  The  painter  of  skill  can 
learn  rather  easily  how  to  practice  any  one 
of  the  arts  named  above.  He  might  prac- 
tice all,  but  for  the  shortness  of  the  day's 
working  hours  and  the  need  of  working  with 
an  untired  brain  and  hand.  Many  artists 


stored   and   active    mind  and    an   alert    in- 
telligence   are    aided    by   working   in    more 
directions  than  one  and  under  differing  con- 
ditions. 
"  He  who  blows  thro'  bronze  may  breathe  thro'  silver." 

as  Browning  says  in  the  touching  address  to 
his  wife  at  the  close  of  the  original  edition 
of  "Men  and  Women": 

"He  who  works  in  fresco,  steals  a  hair-brush, 
Curbs  the  liberal  hand,  subservient  proudly, 
Cramps  his  spirit,  crowds  its  all  in  little, 
Makes  a  strange  art  of  an  art  familiar, 
Fills  his  lady's  missal-marge  with  flowerets." 


A  LION. 

Example  of  a  line  drawing  by  Rembrandl.     (Front  a  Carbon  Print  by  Braun.) 


work  at  oil  painting,  water  color  and  pastels 
interchangeably;  others  make  ornamental 
windows  (this  being  that  decorative  art 
which  flourishes  most  vigorously  in  our  time) 
while  still  painting  much  or  most  of  their 
working  time;  others  have  specialties  of 
portrait  work  in  black,  or  white  and  red 
chalk;  others  make  black  and  white  draw- 
ings for  the  illustration  of  books  and  period- 
icals. The  old  rule  obtains,  that  steady  and 
uninterrupted  practice  gives  dexterity;  but 
there  is  something  besides  dexterity  in  the 
painter's  art,  and  manysidedness,  a  well- 


Such  wanderings  into  near  and  not  un- 
familiar lands  of  art  may  be  rare — once  in  a 
way  or  never  to  be  repeated — or  they  may 
be  a  lifelong  habit.  Again,  such  work  out- 
side of  one's  main  employment  may  be  a 
mere  avocation  and  rather  an  amusement  or 
a  rest  for  the  spirit  than  a  steady  pursuit; 
or,  again,  the  artist  in  fresco  or  in  oils  may 
work  at  water  color,  at  etching,  or  at  draw- 
ing in  pen  and  ink  for  half  of  his  working 
time.  Rembrandt  is  the  instance  that 
occurs  to  every  one.  Consummate  in  his 
methods  as  a  painter  in  oil  color,  so  much 


THE   TECHNIQUE  AND 


MILLBANK. 
An  etching  by  J.  M,   Whistler,  being  one  of  the  Thames  Series,  1861. 


so  that  the  modern  world  of  painters  stands 
in  rapt  admiration  before  the  works  left  us 
by  that  prodigious  genius;  and  also  the  first 
of  all  artists  with  the  etching  needle  and  the 
acid  bath;  first,  and  in  pure  line  work  so 
very  much  the  first  that  there  is  no  second 
but  Whistler.  Titian  is  another,  and  as 
great  on  the  grandiose  and  stately  side  as 
Rembrandt  is  in  the  familiar  and  men-of- 
the-people  fashion.  The  chalk  heads  in  the 
Louvre  and  Albertina  collections  and  the 
wood -cuts  by  Boldrini  and  others  after 
Titian's  drawings  are  as  stately  as  the  mas- 
ter's own  paintings.  Rubens  is  another 
instance,  and  much  in  the  same  direction, 
his  drawings  and  his  wood-cuts  also  com- 
paring well  with  his  finished  work  in  color. 
Moreover,  all  artists  who  are  concerned 
with  painting  or  any  of  its  associate  or  kin- 
dred arts,  use  drawing  in  some  simple  form 
as  a  means  of  making  studies.  Even  as  we 
find  the  sculptor  modeling  small  heads  and 
figures  in  wax  by  way  of  study,  either  direct 
from  nature  or  by  way  of  embodying  and 
retaining  an  artistic  thought,  so  the  artist 
who  works  upon  the  flat  surface  is  always 
drawing.  He  fills  sketch  books  with  lead- 
pencil  work;  sheets  of  paper  on  his  table 


with  pen  and  ink  stud- 
ies ;  larger  sheets  with 
preparations  for  future 
work  in  light  and 
shade  on  a  great  scale, 
which  preparations 
may  be  in  sauce  and 
stump,  or  indifferently 
with  the  brush  dipped 
in  any  oil  color  or 
water  color  which  hap- 
pens to  be  mixed  and 
ready;  and  finally,  he 
makes  color  studies 
also,  precisely  in  the 
same  way  of  constant 
off-hand  note-taking. 
Indeed,  it  seems  as  if 
the  art  of  pastel  paint- 
ing mentioned  above 
was  specially  invented 
to  enable  artists  to 
make  rapid  color  stud- 
ies, for  the  paper  does 

not  blister  and  buckle  under  the  rubbing  in 
of  the  dry  pastel,  and  you  do  not  have  to 
wait  for  anything  to  dry  before  completing 
your  work.  The  evanescent  gradations  of  a 
sunset  can  only  be  set  down,  even  partially 
and  tentatively,  by  some  such  means  as  this. 
Artists  in  other  lines,  who  have  not  beside 
their  easels  the  whole  paraphernalia  of  col- 
ored crayon  which  we  call  the  palette  of  the 
pastel  painter  are  still  given  to  making  notes 
with  those  pencils  in  colored  chalks  which 
one  buys  at  the  stationers  in  four  or  five 
different  hues. 


T 


HE  PAINTER'S  METHODS.(io) 


When  a  painter  sets  up  his  canvas 
or  his  stretched  sheet  of  heavy 
drawing  paper,  always  with  the 
idea  of  putting  upon  it  a  picture  which  will 
be  of  permanent  value  arid  which  may  per- 
haps sell,  he  will  generally  sketch  in  his 
whole  subject  with  a  point.  He  will  draw 
it  with  a  soft  lead-pencil,  if  it  is  on  paper, 
or  with  charcoal  (which  is  specially  made 
for  the  purpose,  the  carbonized  wood  of  the 
ordinary  willow  being  the  most  commonly 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


37 


used,  whence  the  term  fusairi) ;  but  there  is 
nothing  to  prevent  his  making  his  prelimi- 
nary drawing  with  a  camel's  hair  or  sable 
brush,  if  it  is  water  color,  or  the  bristle  brush, 
if  it  is  oil  pafnting  which  he  has  in  hand — 
nothing  except  occasionally  lack  of  certain 
skill.  Drawing  maybe  done  with  anything; 
moreover,  as  the  only  true  definition  of  draw- 
ing is  the  putting  of  everything  into  its  right 
place,  so  it  is  quite  indifferent  whether  our 
man  is  fond  of  "delineation,"  or  whether 
he  prefers  soft  broad  masses  even  in  his 
preparatory  work.  Nor  does  it  follow  that 
a  very  great  artist  will  use  but  a  few  light 
touches  whereas  a  less  competent  man  will 
draw  his  whole  subject  in  outline.  Nothing 
of  the  kind  can  be  asserted.  There  are,  in 
the  basement  of  the  National  Gallery  in 
London  thousands  of  drawings  by  the  most 
mighty  of  all  landscapists,  J.  M.  W.  Turner, 
and  of  these,  very  many,  even  of  his  middle 
time,  are  astonishing  achievements  in  the 
way  of  outline  drawing  in  pencil — the  whole 
of  the  large  sheet  of  paper  being  covered 
with  a  minute  setting  down  of  all  the  details 
of  an  extended  landscape.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  is  many  a  landscape  artist  of 
immeasureably  less  power  who  finds  it  ines- 
sential in  his  work  to  make  such  elaborate 
preparation  in  the  way  of  outline  drawing. 
To  him  it  is  more  natural,  perhaps,  to  make 
each  finished  drawing  a  study  of  one  thought 
rather  than  a  complex  symphony  like  Tur- 
ner's Swiss  landscapes,  and  this  one  thought 
he  can  carry  in  his  head  sufficiently  well ;  so 
that  the  rounded  tops  of  half  a  dozen  trees 
and  the  curved  line  indicating  the  perspec- 
tive of  the  shore  as  he  sits  by  a  lake  or  river 
with,  perhaps,  the  additional  hint  of  a  rock 
or  a  cow  in  the  foregound,  is  all  that  he  will 
need. 

Upon  the  white  or  creamy-white  ground 
thus  made  ready  and  partitioned  off  by  his 
outlines  into  the  main  patches  or  divisions 
of  his  subject,  the  artist  goes  to  work  at  once 
with  color.  If  a  water  colorist,  he  is  very 
apt  to  put  a  wash  of  some  rather  neutral 
tint  or  perhaps  of  yellow  or  buff  over  his 
whole  composition,  partly  with  the  idea  of 
fixing  the  outlines  more  firmly  if  he  wishes 
to  retain  them,  partly  that  he  may  prepare 
the  paper  the  better  for  work  to  be  added 


later.  If  it  is  oil  painting  on  canvas,  the 
question  is  more  complex,  for  it  would 
seem  that  no  two  painters  approach  their 
work  in  the  same  way.  It  is  quite  well 
known  that  there  are  two  main  processes, 
the  one  the  work  by  a  mosaic  of  little 
patches  of  color  which  are  fitted  close  to  one 
another  and  cover  the  whole  surface  with 
their  resulting  pattern ;  while  the  other  sys- 
tem is  rather  that  of  covering  large  surfaces 
at  once,  which  surfaces  are  again  covered  in 
parts  with  differing  colors,  the  bottom  color 
showing  through  the  other  and  modifying 
its  effect.  Now  it  is  obvious  that  neither 
one  of  these  expedients  serves  by  itself. 
The  different  practice  of  different  painters 
is  unlike  in  this  only  that  the  one  uses  the 
mosaic  system  more  and  the  other  less.  To 
illustrate  the  meaning  more  exactly,  sup- 
pose that  the  artist  wishes  to  paint  a  rock 
over  which  there  falls  a  piece  of  deep  green 
drapery.  It  may  suit  him  to  paint  rock  and 
drapery  at  the  same  time  with  the  same 
brushful  of  color,  and  to  "model"  both  in 
light  and  shade  in  this  color,  which  may, 
perhaps,  be  a  deep  orange.  So  far  the  work 
is  in  monochrome,  only  the  artist  has  chosen 
a  bright  colored  monochrome  instead  of  a 
gray  one.  As  the  piece  of  drapery  is  to  be 
green,  he  now  paints  rapidly  over  so  much 
of  the  modeling  as  represents  that  drapery, 
using  this  time  a  sufficiently  transparent 
blue.  As  the  rock  is  to  be  of  many  tints  of 
warm  brown  touched  with  golden  lichens 
and  shaded  with  dusky  hollows,  this  piece  of 
work  is  more  elaborate ;  and  upon  the  orange 
backgound  the  surface  indications  are  put  in 
smaller  patches,  in  lighter  touches,  in  little 
brush  strokes  constantly  varying  in  color 
and  which  give  an  infinite  series  of  delicate 
gradations.  In  other  words,  the  rock  is  a 
complex,  the  piece  of  stuff  a  simple  piece  of 
painting,  in  this  instance.  It  may  well  be, 
however,  that  the  piece  of  drapery  itself 
requires  much  more  elaboration  than  we 
have  supposed  above ;  for  if  the  stuff  have  a 
silken  surface  with  some  luster  this  luster 
has  very  peculiar  colors  of  its  own,  and  the 
expression  of  the  curious  high  lights  upon 
such  a  silky  surface  are  most  delicate  and 
interesting  to  paint.  If  we  suppose  the 
piece  of  stuff  to  have  an  elaborate  pattern 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


37 


used,  whence  the  term  fusairi) ,  but  there  is 
nothing  to  prevent  his  making  his  prelimi- 
nary drawing  with  a  camel's  hair  or  sable 
brush,  if  it  is  water  color,  or  the  bristle  brush, 
if  it  is  oil  painting  which  he  has  in  hand — 
nothing  except  occasionally  lack  of  certain 
skill.  Drawing  maybe  done  with  anything; 
moreover,  as  the  only  tme  definition  of  draw- 
ing is  the  putting  of  everything  into  its  right 
place,  so  it  is  quite  indifferent  whether  our 
man  is  fond  of  "delineation,"  or  whether 
he  prefers  soft  broad  masses  even  in  his 
preparatory  work.  Nor  does  it  follow  that 
a  very  great  artist  will  use  but  a  few  light 
touches  whereas  a  less  competent  man  will 
draw  his  whole  subject  in  outline.  Nothing 
of  the  kind  can  be  asserted.  There  are,  in 
the  basement  of  the  National  Gallery  in 
London  thousands  of  drawings  by  the  most 
mighty  of  all  landscapists,  J.  M.  W.  Turner, 
and  of  these,  very  many,  even  of  his  middle 
time,  are  astonishing  achievements  in  the 
way  of  outline  drawing  in  pencil — the  whole 
of  the  large  sheet  of  paper  being  covered 
with  a  minute  setting  down  of  all  the  details 
of  an  extended  landscape.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  is  many  a  landscape  artist  of 
immeasureably  less  power  who  finds  it  ines- 
sential in  his  work  to  make  such  elaborate 
preparation  in  the  way  of  outline  drawing. 
To  him  it  is  more  natural,  perhaps,  to  make 
each  finished  drawing  a  study  of  one  thought 
rather  than  a  complex  symphony  like  Tur- 
ner's Swiss  landscapes,  and  this  one  thought 
he  can  carry  in  his  head  sufficiently  well;  so 
that  the  rounded  tops  of  half  a  dozen  trees 
and  the  curved  line  indicating  the  perspec- 
tive of  the  shore  as  he  sits  by  a  lake  or  river 
with,  perhaps,  the  additional  hint  of  a  rock 
or  a  cow  in  the  foregound,  is  all  that  he  will 
need. 

Upon  the  white  or  creamy-white  ground 
thus  made  ready  and  partitioned  off  by  his 
outlines  into  the  main  patches  or  divisions 
of  his  subject,  the  artist  goes  to  work  at  once 
with  color.  If  a  water  colorist,  he  is  very 
apt  to  put  a  wash  of  some  rather  neutral 
tint  or  perhaps  of  yellow  or  buff  over  his 
whole  composition,  partly  with  the  idea  of 
fixing  the  outlines  more  firmly  if  he  wishes 
to  retain  them,  partly  that  he  may  prepare 
the  paper  the  better  for  work  to  be  added 


later.  If  it  is  oil  painting  on  canvas,  the 
question  is  more  complex,  for  it  would 
seem  that  no  two  painters  approach  their 
work  in  the  same  way.  It  is  quite  well 
known  that  there  are  two  main  processes, 
the  one  the  work  by  a  mosaic  of  little 
patches  of  color  which  are  fitted  close  to  one 
another  and  cover  the  whole  surface  with 
their  resulting  pattern;  while  the  other  sys- 
tem is  rather  that  of  covering  large  surfaces 
at  once,  which  surfaces  are  again  covered  in 
parts  with  differing  colors,  the  bottom  color 
showing  through  the  other  and  modifying 
its  effect.  Now  it  is  obvious  that  neither 
one  of  these  expedients  serves  by  itself. 
The  different  practice  of  different  painters 
is  unlike  in  this  only  that  the  one  uses  the 
mosaic  system  more  and  the  other  less.  To 
illustrate  the  meaning  more  exactly,  sup- 
pose that  the  artist  wishes  to  paint  a  rock 
over  which  there  falls  a  piece  of  deep  green 
drapery.  It  may  suit  him  to  paint  rock  and 
drapery  at  the  same  time  with  the  same 
brushful  of  color,  and  to  "model"  both  in 
light  and  shade  in  this  color,  which  may, 
perhaps,  be  a  deep  orange.  So  far  the  work 
is  in  monochrome,  only  the  artist  has  chosen 
a  bright  colored  monochrome  instead  of  a 
gray  one.  As  the  piece  of  drapery  is  to  be 
green,  he  now  paints  rapidly  over  so  much 
of  the  modeling  as  represents  that  drapery, 
using  this  time  a  sufficiently  transparent 
blue.  As  the  rock  is  to  be  of  many  tints  of 
warm  brown  touched  with  golden  lichens 
and  shaded  with  dusky  hollows,  this  piece  of 
work  is  more  elaborate ;  and  upon  the  orange 
backgound  the  surface  indications  are  put  in 
smaller  patches,  in  lighter  touches,  in  little 
brush  strokes  constantly  varying  in  color 
and  which  give  an  infinite  series  of  delicate 
gradations.  In  other  words,  the  rock  is  a 
complex,  the  piece  of  stuff  a  simple  piece  of 
painting,  in  this  instance.  It  may  well  be, 
however,  that  the  piece  of  drapery  itself 
requires  much  more  elaboration  than  we 
have  supposed  above;  for  if  the  stuff  have  a 
silken  surface  with  some  luster  this  luster 
has  very  peculiar  colors  of  its  own,  and  the 
expression  of  the  curious  high  lights  upon 
such  a  silky  surface  are  most  delicate  and 
interesting  to  paint.  If  we  suppose  the 
piece  of  stuff  to  have  an  elaborate  pattern 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


and  to  be  at  the  same  time  a  piece  of  bro- 
caded silk,  then,  indeed,  we  have  a  task 
worthy  of  any  artist's  full  strength,  and  the 
great  Venetians,  Paul  Veronese  especially, 
liked  nothing  better  than  to  follow  the  con- 
volutions of  a  splendid  flowered  design 
through  the  folds  and  gatherings  of  a  bro- 
cade. 

It  is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  the  process 
described  above  is  only  one,  taken  quite 
arbitrarily.  Oil  painting  is  queen  of  all  the 
painters'  art  in  this,  that  it  allows  so  many 
ways  of  work.  You  can  put  light  over  dark 
(a  process  not  possible  in  other  ways  of 
work)  as  easily  as  dark  over  light.  You  can 
even  do  first  one  and  then  the  other,  work- 
ing from  a  dark  ground  up  to  higher  lights 
and  then  putting  in  dark  touches  at  pleas- 
ure, though  this  savors  of  uncertainty  as  to 
your  meaning  and  doubt  about  your  powers. 
And  then  you  can  use  your  pigment  very 
dry,  and  get  powdery  effects,  or  very  wet 
and  shiny,  and  so  get  smears,  and  each  of 
these  is  a  perfectly  legitimate  and  valuable 
way  of  working. 


V 


ARIETIES  IN  THE  PAINTER'S 
METHODS,  (n) 


It  is  obvious  that  these  methods 
are  capable  of  infinite  variety. 
Oil  painting  is  the  most  susceptible  to  vari- 
ations of  treatment  of  all  processes  of  fine 
art,  and  this  because  the  opacity  of  the 
medium  allows  the  artist  to  proceed  almost 
as  he  will  in  the  superimposition  of  color 
upon  color,  pigment  upon  pigment,  from 
the  canvas  to  the  final  result.  Some  artists 
have  used  a  complete  drawing  in  light  and 
shade  as  their  groundwork,  the  whole  sur- 
face of  canvas  or  panel  being  covered  with 
the  work,  except  where  it  was  necessary  to 
reserve  a  perfectly  white  spot  for  the  high- 
est light.  The  painting  upon  this  drawing 
is  then  a  tentative  process,  the  making  of 
colored  lights  and  shades  to  conceal  and 
replace  the  uncolored  or  monochromatic 
lights  and  shades  of  the  original  ground- 
work. For  the  student  must  never  forget 
the  definition  of  painting  given  above, 
namely,  the  reproducing  the  colored  aspect 


of  things ;  nor  the  fact  that  such  reproduc- 
tion of  things  seen  involves  about  as  much 
recognition  of  what  we  call  light  and  shade 
as  recognition  of  what  we  call  color.  In 
fact  the  two  are  one:  sunlighted  grass  is  not 
green  but  a  kind  of  yellow;  shadows  on 
snow  in  sunny  weather  are  not  gray  but  an 
exquisite  blue ;  a  uniformly  colored  billiard 
ball,  equally  dark  red  in  all  its  parts,  is  not 
red  in  look,  either  in  the  high  light  or  in  the 
deep  shadow,  and  the  painter  who  knows 
what  he  is  about  paints  it  accordingly  with 
only  a  very  small  curved  edge  of  the  actual 
red  which  the  unprofessional  observer 
thinks  is  its  investing  color. 

The  above-named  method  is  one  of  the 
primitive  ways;  in  other  systems  of  work 
the  high  lights  are  the  most  heavily  painted 
of  all  parts  of  the  picture.  There,  where 
another  artist  would  have  left  white  paper 
or  canvas  as  the  highest  light  in  his  compo- 
sition, the  painter  of  this  second  school  loads 
heavily  the  brilliant  high  pigments,  grading 
up  into  white;  while  he  keeps  the  darker 
parts  of  his  picture  very  thinly  painted 
indeed,  so  that  the  threads  of  his  canvas  can 
be  seen  through  the  scheme  of  semi-trans- 
lucent pigment.  It  is  observable  that  paint- 
ers who  follow  this  line  of  work  are  apt  to 
be  careful  of  their  gradations,  and  in  this 
way  the  process  we  are  now  speaking  of  is 
an  admirable  one.  If  there  is  the  simplest 
possible  patch  of  very  light  color,  as  in  the 
bellying  sail  of  a  boat,  nearly  white  in  what 
we  call  its  "local  color,"  the  representation 
of  that  sail  in  the  picture  will  contain  but  a 
single  little  spot  of  pure  white,  every  other 
part  of  the  limited  surface  which  stands  for 
the  sail  being  delicately  graded  through 
immeasurable  numbers  of  grays,  yellowish, 
brownish,  reddish,  purplish,  according  to 
the  color  composition  and  the  management 
of  the  light.  The  painter  himself  could  not 
endure  the  loading  of  his  heavy  white  pig- 
ment in  broad  masses;  and  so  this  way  of 
painting  leads  towards  refinement  of  han- 
dling. 

Then,  there  is  that  extraordinary  sys- 
tem which  is  commonly  associated  with  the 
work  of  Titian,  althoiigh  one  approaches 
that  subject  with  extreme  reserve,  knowing 
well  that  the  actual  secrets  hidden  beneath 


THE   FAIRY    WITH   THE   PEARLS,    BY   DIAZ. 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


39 


PRESENTATION    OF    THE   VIRGIN    IN    THE   TEMPLE. 
A  Painting  by  Titian  in  the  Academy^    Venice. 


the  glazed  surface  of  a  Titian  painting  are 
not  seizable  by  even  the  minutest  examina- 
tion of  those  paintings  which,  known  to  be 
his,  are  so  far  injured  that  their  substructure 
can  be  examined.  It  will  be  seen  that  the 
conditions  themselves  are  almost  impossible 
to  realize ;  for  who  can  say  that  he  has  had 
an  undoubted  Titian  in  hand  with  the  privi- 
lege of  tearing  even  a  small  part  of  it  to 
pieces?  Still  the  consensus  of  painters  is  to 
this  effect — that  the  whole  canvas  is  covered 
over  with  a  painting  in  which  grave  colors, 
mosaicwise  in  their  arrangement,  but  in 
large  patches  rather  than  minute  inlays,  and 
that  over  the  whole  picture,  the  brush  works 
now  here,  now  there,  constantly  adding 
warmer,  richer  and  more  brilliant  color; 
bringing  up  this  forehead  or  marble  pedestal 
or  flank  of  white  horse  from  dull  brown 
through  gradations  of  warmer  and  richer 
brown  to  the  delicate  tint  of  full  light  and 
the  still  higher  and  paler  touch  of  brilliancy 


where  the  reflection  comes;  loading  that 
shadow  under  an  archway  or  under  an  eye- 
brow with  deeper  and  graver  colors,  warm 
and  rich  but  somber;  until  the  whole  picture 
has  become  a  glowing  and  intense  harmony, 
taking,  indeed,  the  form  of  what  prelates 
ordered  and  the  public  chooses  to  call  a 
religious  picture,  a  "Presentation  in  the 
Temple,"  or  else  a  "Bacchus  and  Ariadne," 
ordered  by  some  great  noble  for  his  state 
apartments,  but  primarily  a  composition  of 
magnificent  color  arranged  in  a  stately  sys- 
tem of  delicately  chosen  forms. 

The  marvelous  artist  whom  we  call  Paul 
Veronese,  though  he  worked  at  Venice  all 
his  life,  is  thought  to  have  painted  in  colors 
neither  very  dark  nor  very  light,  and  to 
have  covered  his  whole  canvas  at  once  with 
what  must  have  been  a  very  monotonous 
composition;  the  darks  and  lights  and  the 
local  colors  equally  being  very  quiet  and 
little  contrasted  one  with  another.  Upon 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


this,  however,  the  final  work  was  done  with 
an  ease,  a  dexterity  and  a  perfect  adaptation 
of  means  to  ends  which  is  unique  in  the  his- 
tory of  painting.      Ruskin   has   pointed  out 
somewhere  how  a  pearl  is  put  upon  the  red 
silk  gown  of  a  lady  by  a  nearly  semicircular 
touch  of  deeper  red,  the  one  side  of  a,  as 
yet,    non-existent    circle,    another    curved 
touch  of  higher  light  on  the  opposite  side  of 
the   same    imaginary   little  circle,    and   the 
pearl    is    there.       This,    as    that    keen    ob- 
server and  feeble  reasoner  points  out,  means 
that  Veronese   knew    that  the  effect  of  the 
lustrous  pearl  upon  the  red  silk  was  to  reflect 
high  light  in  pure  pearl  color  on  one  side 
and   to   reflect    the   red  of   the  silk  on  the 
other.      He    would    not    waste    his    time    in 
painting  a  silvery  white  disk  to  stand  for  the 
pearl  and  load  red  upon  that  disk  again ;  but 
he  would  leave  the   pre-existing  red   upon 
the  surface  for  the  body  of  his  pearl,  put- 
ting in  little  touches  only  of  deeper  red  and 
the  highest  luster  of  pearl  white.      In   the 
same  way  the  glitter  of  metal  may  be,  and 
is,  painted  by  artists  of  this  way  of  work 
with  so  few  and  so  slight  touches  that  the 
solidity  and  hardness  of  the  thing  is  a  mar- 
vel when  considered  in  connection  with  the 
methods  used  to  produce  it.     A   glittering 
steel  blade  as  a  spear  head  or  a  bayonet,  if 
relieved  upon  a  dark  surface,  as  the  folds  of 
a  banner,  the  dusky  foliage  of  a  tree,  or  the 
cloth  of  a  doublet,  may  be  rendered  with 
two   or   three   long  narrow  lines  of  white, 
passing  as  the  brush  rolls  over  into  bluish 
gray  or  a  warmer  tint  as  the  reflections  of 
the  surrounding  material  may  be  supposed 
to    affect    the    apparent    color  of   the  steel. 
There  is  no  mystery  about  this  work  except 
in    the    astonishing    skill    and    the    perfect 
knowledge  held  far  in  advance  by  the  artist's 
mind  of  all  that  his  future  picture  is  to  con- 
tain.    It  is  evident  that  for  a  man  to  paint  in 
this  way  he  must  see  his  whole  picture  in 
perfect  completed  harmony  before  him,  and 
must    know    with  absolute   certainty   what 
steps  he   may  safely  take  toward    that   re- 
sult.     Then,    whether  he    paints  his  whole 
canvas,     five    by    nine     feet,    all    over    at 
once,   or     whether     he    works    as    Turner 
often    did,    finishing  elaborately   one    little 
piece     in    the    middle     of     his     otherwise 


almost  untouched  surface — this  and  all 
other  considerations  are  indifferent  once 
the  artist  feels  that  he  can  trust  eye,  mem- 
ory, and  hand. 


M 


URAL  PAINTING.(i2j 


Fresco  painting  is  immeasurably 
more  simple,  than  oil  painting,  but 
unfortunately  fresco  painting  is 
so  little  used  in  modern  times  that  it  is  almost 
a  lost  art  in  spite  of  its  simplicity.    The  charm 
of  work  in  fresco  is  almost  the  opposite  of  the 
attraction  so  familiar  to  us  all  in  oil  painting. 
Whereas  the  modern  process  is  in  its  effects 
deep,  glowing,  profound,  massive,  the  result 
of  fresco,  painting  is  pale,  subdued,  without 
luster  or  brilliancy.     It  is,  therefore,  of  all 
methods  of  flat  decoration  the  most  perfectly 
adapted  to  the  walls  of  buildings,  and  the 
great  men  of  the  Italian  Renaissance  thought 
so,  and  some  of  them  said  so  in  the  plainest 
Italian,  as  their  words  have  been  set  down 
for  us  by  the  chronicler  Vasari.     The  diffi- 
culty with  fresco  is  that  it  cannot  be  cleaned, 
repaired,  touched  in  any  way  without  injury. 
It  is  fixed  to  the  wall ;  brushing  and  slight 
rubbing  will  not  affect  it;  but  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  mending  a  crack  in  the  plas- 
ter, or  a  blistering  of  the  plastered  surface; 
and,  if  the  roof  leaks,  the  picture  is  on  the 
high    road    to    absolute    destruction.      The 
modern  neglect  of  fresco  is  partly  traceable 
to  this  defect,   but  the  admiration  for  the 
glow  and  strength  of  oil  painting  which  was 
felt  by  the  artists  of  the  sixteenth  century 
and    which  caused  them  little   by  little   to 
abandon  fresco  for  the  newer  method  and 
which  admiration  still  exists — this  is  proba- 
bly the  major  and  conclusive  reason  for  the 
use  of  oil  painting  by  nearly  all  artists  who 
have  to  choose  between  one  or  the  other. 
In  order  to  overcome  the  natural  difficulty 
of  painting  in  oil  color  upon  any  wall  sur- 
face, any  as  yet  invented  or  imaginary  face- 
material  of  a  wall   or  vault,  the  device  is 
common  of  fixing  a  sheet  of  canvas  fast  to 
the    wall    and    painting    upon     that.     The 
painting  may  even   be  done  in  the  artist's 
studio    and    in   another   city   from   that   in 
which  it  is  to  remain  permanently,  and  then 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ART. 


may  be  rolled  up  and  sent,  and 
glued  to  the  wall  when  it  ar- 
rives. 

It  is   in    this    way   that,    un- 
fortunately,  the    greater    num- 
ber of  mural  paintings  are  exe- 
cuted in   our  time.      The  artist 
would     generally     prefer     the 
method  absolutely  inevitable  in 
the  case  of  the  fresco  painter,  of 
painting  in  the  room  itself  and 
on  the  very  wall  and  under  the 
very  light  which  were  to  form 
the  permanent  conditions  of  his 
work.     He,  more  than  any  one, 
knows  how  much  he  would  be 
helped  in  his  labors  by  having 
the  light  shining  upon  his  wall 
exactly  as  it  would  always  shine, 
and  by  standing  day  by  day  on 
the  floor  from  which  the  public 
would  see  his  work  for  a  cen- 
tury to  come.     Modern  require- 
ments   of    haste    prevent    this 
even  in  cases  where  the  artist 
is  a  native  of  the  city  where  his 
work   is  to  be   put   up.      The 
building   is    being    hurried    to 
completion  that  its  money-mak- 
ing or  other  economical  value 
may  be  enjoyed  at  the  earliest 
moment,   and   the    artist's    six 
months'  work  upon  his  canvas 
must  be  carried  on  while  the 
building  is  still  far  from  being 
a  safe  place  for  his  work.     It  is, 
of  course,  quite  feasible  for  final  touches  and 
even  rather  extensive  supplementary  work 
to  be  applied  to  the  canvas,  however  per- 
fectly finished  it  may  have  seemed  before  it 
left  the  studio.     At  the  same  time  the  tend- 
ency  to  paint  pictures    in  one  light  which 
are  to  be  hung  permanently  in  another  is  a 
most  unfortunate  result  of  the  modern  habit 
of  considering  a  work  of  art  as  altogether 
movable  and  migratory,  to  be  shown  in  Paris 
to-day  and  in  San  Francisco  to-morrow,  and 
in  a  darkened  and  crowded  drawing-room  or 
in  the  pure  high-lighted  corridor  of  a  public 
building — no  one  in  advance  can  say  which, 
or  whether  not  alternately  in  one  and  in  the 
other.     It  is  not  in  this  way  that  the  tri- 


PASTORAL    LIFE    OF    ST.    GENEVIEVE. 
Py  Ptivis  de  Chavannes,  in  the  Pantheon,  Paris. 


umphs  of  the  great  schools  have  been  built 
up.  The  last  of  the  great  mural  painters — 
the  last  man  who  had  something  of  the  tra- 
ditional way  of  working  and  who  had  the 
secret  of  producing  fine  art  on  a  large  scale 
without  lack  of  simplicity  and  without  lapse 
of  power — Pierre  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  had 
to  submit  to  this  when,  in  his  old  age,  he 
painted  large  pictures  for  the  Boston  Public 
Library;  but  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  he 
enjoyed  more  and  felt  more  personal  pride 
in  those  which  he  could  put  up  himself  on 
the  unwindowed  walls  of  the  Pantheon  of 
Paris  and  watch  day  by  day  during  the  years 
following  their  final  completion. 

The  practice  of  painting  mural  pictures  as 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


if  they  were  easel  pictures  in  the  artist's 
studio  must  of  necessity  lead  to  a  treatment 
of  the  details,  of  the  surfaces,  of  the  texture, 
of  the  arrangement  of  figures  as  if  for  an 
easel  picture.  And  this  is  more  of  a  defect, 
more  of  an  injury  to  mural  painting  taken 
altogether  than  one  at  first  perceives.  The 
easel  picture  can  never  be  very  large,  and 
it  is  by  the  very  nature  of  the  case  expected 
to  be  painted  as  if  to  be  viewed  from  one 
point,  usually  a  point  opposite  the  middle  of 
the  horizon  line.  A  mural  painting,  on  the 
other  hand,  must  frequently  be  of  such  size 


MICHELANGELO. 
Painter  and  Sculptor  (1475-1564). 


in  proportion  to  the  size  of  the  room  in 
which  it  is  placed  that  there  must  be  more 
points  of  view  than  one.  The  extreme 
instance  of  this,  or,  at  least,  the  instance 
most  easy  to  cite  and  to  make  understood,  is 
that  of  the  famous  vault  of  the  Sistine 
Chapel,  Michelangelo's  masterpiece,  the 
greatest  work  in  surface  adornment  which 
the  world  of  Europe  has  seen.  In  this  there 
are  five  different  points  of  view.  The  room, 
140  feet  long  and  one-third  or  hardly  one- 
third  as  wide,  allows  the  student  of  the 
vault  painting  to  walk  slowly  along  the  floor 


from  below  and  look  up  at  one  section  after 
another  of  the  great  composition  above 
The  artist  has  forseen  this  and  has  given  his 
work  the  character  of  five  separate  lines  of 
vision.  Now,  it  will  not  often  happen  that 
so  very  remarkable  a  division  of  the  painted 
composition  will  be  necessary  But  some- 
thing of  the  kind  is  of  frequent  occurrence, 
nor  is  the  painter  of  a  large  picture  safe  if 
he  is  driven  by  lack  of  practice  or  by  lack  of 
opportunity  to  estimate  his  work  in  situ,  to 
treat  that  as  a  portable  picture  which  is  in 
reality  the  adornment  of  a  long  stretch  of 
permanent  wall. 

There  is  another  way  in  which  the  paint- 
ing of  the  mural  picture  elsewhere  than  in 
its  permanent  place  is  injurious.  The  artist 
is  apt  to  overrate  the  necessity  of  flatness — 
of  the  subduing  of  the  whole  to  a  moderate 
and  restrained  perspective,  the  keeping 
down  of  the  effects  of  distance  and  of  suc- 
cessive and  repeating  planes  of  the  design. 
There  has  so  much  been  said  of  the  necessity 
of  keeping  the  work  flat  and  of  avoiding 
"making  holes  in  the  wall"  that  even  this 
perfectly  true  and  very  necessary  adage 
has  led  to  the  contrary  abuse.  It  is  far  more 
common  nowadays  to  see  mural  paintings 
which  suffer  from  a  lack  of  interesting 
detail,  than  it  is  to  find  those  which,  from 
excess  of  detail,  and  that  in  different 
planes,  seem  more  like  pieces  of  nature  and 
less  than  they  should  like  the  carrying  out 
of  the  decorative  scheme  of  the  interior. 
And  when  "details"  are  spoken  of  in  the 
last  sentence  it  does  not  mean  details  of 
costume,  of  feature,  or  of  foliage  so  much  as 
details  of  the  mere  painted  work  itself.  The 
most  important  thing  after  dignity,  large- 
ness and  noble  composition  of  the  geneial 
scheme  is  unquestionably  the  interesting 
painting  of  the  parts.  Every  bare  arm, 
every  shoulder,  every  floating  robe,  every 
skirt  of  the  coat  or  leather  belt  should  bo 
the  medium  of  interesting  combinations  of 
tint  and  gradation  of  apparent  surface. 
There  is  no  reason  why,  because  the  picture 
is  on  a  flat  wall  that  the  flesh,  or  the  silken 
or  woolen  stuff  should,  in  the  artist  s  hands, 
be  otherwise  than  a  most  attractive  medium 
for  delicate  and  elaborately  refined  color; 
nor  can  a  worse  condemnation  be  passed 


NOAH'S    DRUNKENNESS. 


THE    DELUGE. 


ANIMAL    SACRIFICE 


FALL    OK    MAN 


CREATION    OK    EVE. 


CREATION    OF    ADAM. 


CREATION    OK    ANIMALS. 


CREATION  OK  THE  SUN  AND 
MOON. 


PARTING     OK     LIGHT    FROM 
DARKNESS. 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


45 


upon  a  large  wall  painting  than  the  finding 
it  dull  in  its  parts.  Something  of  this  has 
been  said  above  in  the  analysis  we  under- 
took of  the  painter's  manipulation  of  his 
surface.  If  the  student  finds  that  in  a  fin- 
ished canvas  any  large  surface  is  without 
attraction  for  him,  he  may  suspect  that 
something  is  wrong  with  the  picture.  No 
important  mural  painting  should  have  any- 
where a  patch  as  big  as  the  palm  of  one's 
hand  which  is  devoid  of  attractive  and  inter- 
esting gradation  of  color  and  of  effect  in 
color,  of  dark  and  light,  and  therefore,  of 
rounded  and  flowing  surfaces. 


THE  ARCHITECT  AT  WORK. (13) 
The  fine  art  practiced  by  the 
architect  is  treated,  in  general 
writing  and  discussion,  as  a  third 
fine  art  correlative  with  painting  and  sculp- 
ture. Reasons  will  be  given  in  future  les- 
sons for  pronouncing  this  a  false  view  of  the 
conditions  of  the  art  of  architecture.  So  far 
from  being  a  pure  fine  art  of  form,  or  of  light 
and  shade,  or  of  color,  or  of  all  of  these 
united,  architecture  is  a  complex  art  consist- 
ing largely  of  utilitarian  theory  and  practice, 
and  of  fine  art  applied  to  the  utilitarian 
ground  work  sometimes  in  a  subordinate, 
sometimes  in  a  superior  or  controlling  way. 
Architecture  is,  therefore,  a  decorative  art 
in  the  sense  in  which  that  term  is  used 
throughout  these  lessons. 

In  order  that  some  uniformity  may  be 
maintained  in  the  treatment  given  to  this 
art  with  that  to  the  others  already  passed  in 
review,  we  have  to  state  here  what  are  the 
architect's  methods  of  work.  In  the  first 
place  the  architect,  being  largely  a  profes- 
sional adviser  as  well  as  an  artist  or  builder, 
is  called  on  very  often  for  advice ;  and  that 
in  advance  of  the  transaction  of  any  business 
in  the  way  of  producing  new  work.  Thus, 
an  owner,  if  he  is  wise,  will  consult  his 
architect  as  to  the  choice  of  the  lot ;  or,  the 
lot  being  chosen,  will  consult  his  architect 
as  to  the  best  place  for  the  building  upon 
the  reserved  ground.  In  an  important 
instance  recently  occurring,  the  employer 
possessed  in  the  immediate  neighborhood  of 


one  of  our  smaller  cities  a  magnificent  plot 
of  five  acres  with  a  hillock  crowned  by  noble 
oak  trees;  and  projecting  from  this,  like  an 
L,  a  piece  of  ground  eighty  feet  wide  by  a 
hundred  and  forty  feet  deep  which  reached 
to  and  fronted  upon  an  important  avenue. 
It  was  the  owner's  intention  to  put  his 
dwelling  house  among  the  trees  on  the 
hillock  and  to  use  the  eighty  foot  lot  as  an 
entrance  only;  but  the  suggestion  made  by 
the  architect  and  immediately  adopted  was 
to  put  the  house  upon  the  eighty  foot  lot, 
which  was  wide  enough  to  leave  a  driveway 
passing  under  a  carriage  porch  on  the  flank 
of  the  house,  and  in  this  way  to  have  the 
five  acre  lot  with  its  broken  surface  and  its 
fine  trees  as  the  first  object  in  the  eyes  of 
the  inhabitants  of  the  house.  This  peculi- 
arity of  position  made  it  necessary  to  plan 
the  house  with  especial  reference. to  the  rear 
windows  and  the  rear  verandas.  They  were 
now  to  be  the  most  attractive  part  of  the 
dwelling.  It  was  the  business  of  the  archi- 
tect to  make  the  house  so  convenient  and  so 
agreeable  on  these  new  lines,  and  so  suc- 
cessful artistically,  that  the  owner  would 
never  be  tempted  to  regret  the  change  from 
his  original  scheme.  The  architect  threw 
away  a  great  chance  for  excellent  effects  in 
landscape  architecture  united  with  house 
architecture ;  but  this  he  did  as  a  conscien- 
tious adviser,  bound  to  tell  his  employer 
what  plan  would  be  most  satisfactory. 

In  the  case  of  a  public  building  the  archi- 
tect's duty  is  less  clear,  because  the  needs 
of  the  occupants  are  almost  never  ascer- 
tained or  fixed  in  advance.  Architects  often 
complain  of  the  close  tying  up  of  their 
efforts  at  design  by  the  owner  of  a  dwelling 
or  his  wife  and  daughters,  but  it  is  on  the 
whole  better  to  know  in  advance  what  is 
wanted  than  to  have  the  later  and  often 
too  late  suggestions  and  demands  of  different 
officials  and  different,  perhaps  newly  organ- 
ized, committees.  Still,  under  all  the  diffi- 
culties inherent  in  the  business  it  is  the 
duty  of  the  modern  architect  to  provide, 
first,  an  entirely  convenient  building  in 
which  business  can  be  done  or  daily  life  can 
be  led  ;  second,  to  provide  this  at  the  lowest 
reasonable  cost  and  at  a  cost  not  higher 
than  his  original  promises  or  the  acceptance 


46 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


by  him  of  the  owner's  statements;  third,  to 
give  to  this  building  artistic  character  within 
and  without.  This  last  requirement  may  be 
limited  sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of  a  small 
frame  house,  or  a  business  building  upon 
which  but  little  money  is  to  be  spent  and 
which  must  be  cairied  up  rapidly  to  save 
rent,  to  the  securing  of  a  generally  agree- 
able mass,  or,  in  the  case  of  a  city  building, 
an  agreeable  fenestration,  that  is  to  say,  the 
arrangement  of  windows  and  doors  so  as  to 
pleasantly  diversify  the  walls  and  contrast 
agreeably  the  darkness  of  the  openings  with 
the  brilliancy  of  the  sunlighted  surfaces  of 
masonry. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  certain  cases, 
much  too  rare  in  our  modern  commu- 
nities, the  opportunity  is  given  to  diver- 
sify the  building  by  means  of  advancing 
pavilions  and  retreating  curtain-walls,  by 
means  of  different  heights  of  cornice  and 
different  forms  and  slopes  of  the  roofs  rising 
above  them,  by  different  arrangements  of 
chimneys,  dormer  windows  and  the  like  in 
connection  with  these  roofs,  and,  finally,  by 
the  addition  of  sculpture  and  sometimes  of 
color.  As  for  the  interior,  it  is  still  more 
seldom  in  modern  times  that  this  receives 
proper  architectural  treatment.  The  tend- 
ency to  utilize  mural  painting  and  rich 
glass  in  this  direction,  and  the  natural  influ- 
ence of  those  great  arts  upon  our  people, 
have  not  as  yet  gone  far  in  the  way  of  pro- 
ducing purely  architectural  work  of  value. 
It  is,  however,  the  architect's  business  to  do 
the  best  that  circumstances  allow  to  give  a 
certain  coherency  and  completeness  to  his 
interior.  Thus,  it  is  rightly  considered  as  a 
great  defect  in  the  generally  admirable  work 
of  one  of  the  best-known  and  most  admired 
American  architects,  that  his  architectural 
interior  work  consisted  almost  exclusively  of 
splendid  mantel-pieces,  stairs  with  their 
accessories,  dadoes  or  other  internal  decora- 
tions of  this  or  that  large  room ;  while  the 
building  generally  was  mere  carpenter  work 
like  that  of  the  most  cheaply  built  and  unpre- 
tentious school  or  country  hotel  in  the  land. 
In  other  words  there  was  no  architectural 
treatment  at  all  given  to  the  interior:  it  was 
hard  pine  floors  and  white  plaster  walls  and 
nothing  else;  but  a  separate  design  was 


made  for  a  mantel-piece,  and  one  for  the 
newel-post  and  the  balustrades  of  the  great 
staircase,  as  if  these  had  been  ordered  for 
exportation  to  a  building  of  no  matter  what 
character  or  situation.  The  outside  and  the 
inside  of  the  building  were  not  one,  nor  was 
the  inside  anything  at  all,  considered  as  an 
architectural  unit. 

These  brief  suggestions  may  show  what 
the  architect  has  to  do.  As  to  the  way  in 
which  he  does  it,  it  is  unfortunately  far  too 
much  a  matter  of  the  drawing-board  and  of 
"plans,  elevations  and  sections,"  and  not 
enough  a  matter  of  work  done  in  and  upon 
the  building  itself.  This  comes  partly  of  the 
very  unfortunate  practice  of  contracting  for 
the  whole  building  in  advance.  This,  of 
course,  is  agreeable  to  persons  Avho  wish  to 
limit  their  expenditure  and  to  know  exactly 
what,  as  they  think,  they  have  to  expect. 
It  is  also  in  accordance  with  our  modern 
idea  of  business-like  accuracy  and  of  simplic- 
ity of  proceeding.  It  is,  however,  almost 
the  most  serious  obstacle  to  the  growth  of  a 
living  architecture  in  modern  times.  Detail 
that  is  worthy  of  the  name  has  never  been 
designed  in  advance  and  drawn  out  on  paper; 
and  although  this  necessity  is  partly  gotten 
over  by  a  fiction  to  which  the  architect  and 
the  contractor  lend  themselves,  they  two 
agreeing  that  a  certain  amount  of  money 
shall  be  allowed  in  the  contract  for  certain 
sculptures,  mosaic  floors,  or  the  like,  yet  the 
difficulty  visible  in  this  case  is  equally  great 
though  not  equally  evident  in  other  parts  of 
the  work.  Buildings  built  entirely  by  day's 
work  with  the  designing  architect  frequently 
"upon  the  beams"  or  inside  the  rising  struc- 
ture are  immeasurably  more  likely  to  be 
well  designed  than  those  which  are  put 
under  contract  in  advance. 

There  is,  of  course,  no  difficulty  whatever 
in  combining  this  advantage  with  the  pre- 
liminary preparation  of  the  most  complete 
plans  showing  the  exact  arrangement  of  the 
rooms,  their  height,  disposition,  the  place  of 
the  openings,  etc.  The  essential  value  of  the 
day's  work  process  in  some  of  its  forms  is  that 
it  gives  an  opportunity  for  those  changes  of 
mind — those  new  ideas  springing  out  of  new 
suggestions — without  which  a  building  can 
hardly  hope  to  be  as  good  as  the  circum- 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART, 


47 


stances  may  admit.  For  better  or  for  worse, 
however,  the  present  system  is  almost 
wholly  a  matter  of  elaborate  drawing  made 
in  the  architect's  office,  multiplied  by  photo- 
graphic processes  so  that  copies  may  be 
furnished  to  the  different  contractors,  and 
of  a  specification,  which  is  a  written  expla- 
nation of  the  drawings  with  regulations  and 
restrictions  concerning  the  materials  to  be 
employed  and  the  methods  of  work  desired. 
These  drawings  and  specifications  form  the 
greater  part  of  the  contract,  for  these  alone 
properly  agreed  to  before  witnesses  and,  as 
is  sometimes  done,  signed  by  the  contracting 
parties  are  binding  upon  owner  and  builder. 
The  architect  is  in  every  case  assumed  to  be 
a  superintendent  whose  duty  it  is  to  see  fair 
play.  He  is  employed  and  paid  by  the 
owner,  but  his  duty  seems  to  be  recognized 
as  equally  toward  the  builder,  to  see  that  he 
receives  his  money  duly  at  the  times  agreed 
upon,  the  architect's  certificate  of  work  done 
amounting  to  a  draught  upon  thq  owner 
which  the  latter  can  hardly  afford  to  disre- 
gard. Of  course,  it  frequently  happens  that 
the  building  may  be  far  away  from  the  place 
of  the  architect's  business  office  and  resi- 
dence, and  that  in  consequence  a  local 
superintendent  has  to  be  employed.  This 
latter  may  or  may  not  be  in  touch  with  the 
architect  and  the  architect  may  or  may  not 
make  occasional  visits  to  the  work. 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  modern  architect 
is  very  largely  a  financial  agent.  Being  this, 
he  can  hardly  be  much  of  a  designer;  for  a 
designer  must  have  an  easy  mind  and  quiet 
hours  of  work.  A  sculptor  defends  the  door 
of  his  studio:  from  nine  to  twelve  and  from 
one  to  four,  he  allows  "no  admittance,"  not 
even  to  a  close  friend.  The  painter's  friends 
know  that  he  cannot  be  seen  while  "the 
model  is  posing.  "  But  what  architect  dares 
to  refuse  himself  to  employer  or  contractor, 
or.  will  have  the  firmness  even  to  get  an 
hour's  quiet  over  his  design  in  the  course  of 
each  busy  day?  The  conditions  of  modern 
practice  are  then,  very  much  opposed  to  any 
great  advance  in  the  artistic  side  of  archi- 
tecture. The  general  feeling  among  modern 
architects  is  that  something  very  serious  is 
wrong  with  their  practice,  and  papers  are 
read  and  discussions  carried  on  in  the  meet- 


ings of  all  our  numerous  architectural  socie- 
ties based  upon  the  general  feeling  of  the 
necessity  of  a  change.  The  possibility  of 
such  a  change  is,  however,  less  visible  than 
its  necessity.  The  fine  art  of  architecture 
is  less  truly  alive  than,  for  instance,  the  fine 
art  of  sculpture.  A  sculptor  of  to-day  may 
feel  himself  one  of  the  same  noble  brother- 
hood with  Scopas,  Donatello  and  Buonar- 
rotti;  but  no  architect  of  the  nineteenth 
century  has  been  able,  without  undue  and 
thoughtless  presumption,  to  consider  himself 
professionally  allied  to  the  nameless  men  in 
whose  hands  the  Doric  or  the  Ionic  style 
took  shape,  or  the  vaulting  system  of  the 
thirteenth  century  was  matured;  nor  yet 
with  those  men  whose  names  we  have,  those 
early  workers  of  the  Renaissance  in  Italy  or 
its  later  beginnings  in  France. 


D 


ECORATIVE     ART     IN     GEN- 
ERAL. (14) 


The  arts  of  design  are  both  repre- 
sentative and  decorative.  Some 
particular  kinds  of  such  art  are  not  repre- 
sentative at  all,  but  all  are  decorative.  It  is 
necessary  to  explain  in  a  few  words  what 
signification  is  given  here  to  the  word  deco- 
rative, and  to  the  corresponding  words  deco- 
ration and  the  verb  to  decorate.  The  object 
of  the  writer  is  to  use  one  word  which  will 
convey  the  idea  of  fine  art  used  for  the  pur- 
pose of  making  that  attractive  to  the  eye 
which  would  otherwise  be  merely  an  object 
of  utility.  Thus,  a  square  wooden  box  is 
uninteresting  to  look  at;  and  the  words  "a 
packing  box"  are  used  as  a  synonym  for 
something  plain  and  ugly  in  its  plainness ; 
but  it  is  easy  to  see  a  dozen  ways  of  decora- 
ting a  packing  box  so  as  to  make  it  very 
interesting  indeed.  Some  of  these  methods 
of  decorating  would  be  the  mere  laying  on 
of  painting,  inlaying  or  other  adornment  in 
color,  or  by  patterns  or  the  like  on  the  flat 
wooden  surfaces ;  but  there  are  other  meth- 
ods which  consist  in  adorning  the  actiial 
construction  of  the  box.  Thus,  if  the  nail 
heads  are  forged  in  wrought  iron  and  struck 
with  dies  so  that  each  is  a  pretty  thing  in 
itself,  and  if  they  are  so  used  that  the  series 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


THE   BOURSE,    BRUSSELS. 
A  fine  example  o_f  architectural  disposition. 


of  nails  along  the  edge,  naturally  and  sensi- 
bly spaced,  shall  be  still  more  a  pleasing 
thing  by  its  combination  of  beautiful  units; 
and  if  in  addition  to  this  the  edges  of  the 
boards  are  notched,  one  long  and  not  very 
deep  notch  being  put  between  each  two 
nails,  or,  in  a  more  elaborate  pattern  two  or 
three  notches  of  different  shapes  being  so 
interposed,  that  box  is  certainly  made  into 
a  decorative  object.  Moreover,  this  has 
been  done  without  the  addition  of  anything 
to  its  necessary  conditions,  except  that  the 
nailheads  are  a  little  larger  than  essential 
and  that  the  notches  may  perhaps  be  consid- 
ered as  labor  lost  if  the  utility  of  the  box 
alone  is  considered.  There  is  decoration  of 
a  very  sensible  sort ;  and  in  this  there  is  no 
representation  at  all.  That  is  decorative 
art  but  not  representative  art.  If  now  we 
add  to  that  box  the  necessary  address  to  its 
consignee  incised  with  those  grooves  of 
curved  section  which  are  made  by  an  instru- 
ment especially  intended  for  such  inefface- 


able inscriptions,  and  if  the  man  who  does 
the  lettering  be  a  man  of  taste  with  a  sense 
for  the  possible  beauty  of  the  forms  of 
letters,  the  decoration  is  carried  one  step 
further,  still  without  the  addition  of  any 
representative  art  at  all.  Again  if  the  artist 
be  so  moved  by  the  enjoyment  of  his  design 
that  he  puts  the  heads  and  tails  of  dragons 
to  some  of  his  letters  and  carves  floral  sprays 
at  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  each  line, 
he  is,  in  doing  so,  introducing  representative 
art  to  help  his  decoration.  He  would  not  do 
this  for  a  box  to  be  sent  by  express  some- 
where, but  he  might  easily  be  supposed  to 
do  it  for  a  chest  which  is  to  contain  some  of 
his  family  treasures.  In  fact,  as  we  know 
very  well,  the  decoration  of  lettering  has 
been  a  large  part  of  the  fine  art  of  many 
important  epochs.  Chests  have  come  down 
to  us  from  Italy  in  the  fourteenth  century 
in  which  the  corners  and  edges  are  left  as 
plain  as  the  make  of  the  dove-tailed  box 
would  allow;  while  every  large  surface  is 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


49 


engraved  all  over  with  a  delicate  pattern  in 
lines  evidently  made  by  some  tool  not  now 
in  our  workshops.  These  lines  may  have 
been  intended  to  be  filled  with  mastic  of 
different  color,  and  some  specimens  still 
retain  that  filling;  others,  however,  seem  to 
have  been  left  willingly  with  merely  the 
slight  play  of  light  and  shade  in  the  deep 
and  narrow  grooves.  This  is  engraving  as 
absolutely  as  the  work  of  the  burin  on  plates 
of  copper  or  in  the  silver  tea-kettle  is  en- 
graving. It  is  carried  very  far  in  the  way 
of  representative  art,  for  the  patterns  include 
figures  of  men  and  women  and  animals  with 
floral  scrolls,  and  the  only  parts  which  are 
decorative  and  not  representative  are  nar- 
row borders  in  which  zig-zags  and  circles 
play  their  part  of  making  up  enclosing 
bands.  So,  in  the  paddle  made  by  some 
South  Sea  Islander,  the  blade  and  the  handle 
will  be  covered  thick  with  notches  and  in- 
cised circles  and  little  conical  pits,  and  these 
are  arranged  with  extraordinary  decorative 
power  in  patterns  which  occupy  every  part 
of  the  surface  and  which  have  no  represent- 
ative significance  whatever;  while  around 
the  head  of  the  paddle  a  ring  of  nearly  tri- 
angular or  generally  shield-shaped  projec- 
tions seem  at  first  as  non-significant  as  the 
notches  of  the  blade,  but  are  found  on 
examination  to  be  far  away  reminiscences 
of  the  human  head  and  face.  The  most 
important  and  remarkable  instance  of  deco- 
rative art  which  has  no  representative  pur- 
pose is  that  of  architectural  disposition,  as 
when  a  building  is  made  attractive  by  the 
mere  arrangement  of  its  windows  and  doors, 
its  pilasters  or  buttresses,  its  columns  and 
what  they  support,  and  the  dark  spaces  be- 
tween them,  its  proportion  of  walls  to  roof 
and  of  tall  chimneys  and  dormer  windows  to 
both,  or  its  general  grouping  of  broader  and 
smaller,  higher  and  less  high  pavilions,  tow- 
ers, body  and  wings.  This  is  in  one  sense 
the  most  important  decorative  art  we  know, 
because  the  money  spent  and  the  time  and 
labor  given  are  so  very  noteworthy,  and  the 
amount  of  human  intelligence  which  can 
go  into  the  perfecting  of  such  a  design  is  so 
great. 

There  is  no  word  in  the  language  which 
renders  perfectly  the  idea  of  fine  art  used 


in  this  sense.  The  words  we  have  cited 
above,  decoration  and  its  cogeners,  and  the 
words  ornament,  ornamentation  and  to  orna- 
ment have  each  this  defect,  that  their  use  con- 
veys to  the  minds  of  most  persons  the  idea  of 
putting  on  something  decorative  after  the 
thing  is  made.  The  present  writer  used 
the  following  sentence  not  many  years  ago 
in  a  chapter  which  was  to  him  of  considera- 
ble importance:  "Architecture  is  what  is 
known  as  a  decorative  art;  that  is,  it  con- 
sists in  applying  fine  art  to  certain  objects  of 
utility — in  this  case  to  buildings."  The 
sentence  was  composed  thoughtfully  and 
the  phrase  "applying  fine  art"  was  weighed, 
because  the  writer  feared  that  that  would 
happen  which  did  happen,  namely,  that 
some  readers  would  think  that  this  meant 
that  fine  art  was  brought  afterwards  and 
put  upon  the  finished  object  of  utility.  That 
misunderstanding  did  take  place  to  an  ex- 
tent which  was  not  anticipated,  however, 
and  an  excellent  critic,  a  professional  archi- 
tect and  a  careful  and  thoughtful  student  of 
the  art,  objected  to  the  statement,  because, 
as  he  said  truly,  to  the  real  lover  of  archi- 
tecture the  fine  art  consists  in  using  the 
essential  parts  of  the  structure  and  not  in 
any  subsequent  additions  to  it.  This  illus- 
trates the  difficulty  of  using  the  words  now 
recognized  in  any  general  sense.  The 
language  needs  a  term  which  will  express 
the  idea  of  fine  art  used  for  the  beautifica- 
tion  of  useful  things. 

For  the  present  there  is  no  term  so  good 
as  the  word  decoration  and  the  words  con- 
nected with  it.  Let  us  consider  a  building 
which  every  one  knows,  the  fagade.of  Notre 
Dame  and  its  famous  chevet — its  East  End 
as  seen  from  the  other  side  of  the  river,  that 
is,  from  the  southeast.  The  fagade  is  a 
piece  of  careful  disposition  of  parts,  although 
the  designer,  of  course,  intended  it  to  be 
completed  by  two  lofty  tapering  spires. 
Without  these  it  deserves  somewhat  less 
praise  than  it  has  received,  and  yet  it  is  a 
fine  composition.  This  beauty  is,  however, 
enhanced  and  that  quite  beyond  what  we 
can  understand  except  by  long  continued 
comparison  of  many  buildings — enhanced 
by  the  abundant  use  of  sculpture.  This  is 
given  in  the  form  of  statues  of  colossal  size, 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


statues  of  about  life-size,  statues  so  much 
smaller  than  life-size  that  they  would  be 
called  statuettes  if  they  were  considered 
separately  and  apart  from  the  archways 
which  they  adorn,  wall  sculpture,  both  in 
high  relief  and  in  relief  very  flat  indeed, 
and  floral  carving  interspersed  with  animal 


NOTRK    DAMK    DE    PARIS,    PARIS. 


forms  in  great  abundance  and  suggesting 
much  movement  and  abounding  life.  This 
sculpture  is,  some  of  it,  a  modifying  of  the 
surface  of  the  structure  itself  as  when,  to 
take  the  simplest  instance,  the  jamb  of  the 
window  is  molded  and  the  moldings  filled 
with  little  sharp-edged  leaves,  or,  to  take 


the  most  elaborate  instance,  where  a  water- 
spout is  carved  into  the  grotesque  resem- 
blance of  a  living  creature.  Other  parts  of 
the  sculpture  are  absolutely  independent  of 
the  building  and  form  a  part  of  it  merely  in 
the  sense  of  being  put  exactly  where  it  is 
wanted  and  of  improving  the  artistic  charac- 
ter of  the  building  quite 
beyond  our  computa- 
tion. The  application 
of  all  this  sculpture  of 
both  kinds  and  the  pro- 
portioning of  the  parts 
of  the  building  so  that 
while  it  remains  useful 
and  exactly  what  was 
needed  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, it  becomes 
also  lovely  to  look  upon 
— all  this  is  decorative 
art:  and  decorative  art 
used  in  this  way  is  what 
we  mean  by  Architec- 
ture when  that  term  is 
used  absolutely  and 
without  any  qualifying 
adjective. 

If  instead  of  the  fa- 
gade,  we  consider  the 
East  End,  there  is  so 
little  sculpture  that  it 
hardly  tells  upon  the 
general  effect,  which 
effect  is  produced  by 
the  amazing  complica- 
tion of  the  structure 
and  its  treatment  with 
perfect  success  and  ap- 
parent ease  for  beauty 
as  well  as  for  use. 
Every  one  of  those  fly- 
ing buttresses  is  taking 
up  its  part  of  the  thrust 
of  the  high  vault  within, 
which,  but  for  those 

buttresses  would  thrust  out  the  walls  and 
let  down  the  whole  building  in  ruin. 
Each  one  of  those  upright  masses  of 
masonry  which  we  call  buttress  piers,  and 
which  are  crowned,  and  steadied,  by  steeple- 
like  pinnacles,  is  resisting  the  push  of  one  or 
more  of  those  flying  buttresses.  Each  slop- 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


ing  surface  is  cut  into  a  gutter,  and  the  rain 
from  the  roof  runs  down  it  and  away  through 
the  gargoyles.  Except  that  the  actual  stone 
roof  of  the  building  is  concealed  by  a  lofty 
ridged  roof  built  up  upon  the  vaulting  by 
means  of  a  forest  of  timber  and  covered 
with  lead,  the  structure  of  the  building  is 
plainly  shown,  and  that  structure  is  made 
decorative.  The  inside  of  a  Gothic  church 
is,  indeed,  its  most  important  part;  it  is  for 
the  inside  that  the  outside  is  created,  and 
the  flying  buttress  system  is  there  merely 
that  the  interior  may  be  finished  at  top  with 
a  stone  vault;  but  these  conditions  once 
accepted,  the  exterior  is  made  as  attractive 
as  the  building  which  the  worshipers  see 
within. 

The  different  kinds  of  decorative  art  par- 
take more  or  less  of  this  same  characteristic 
of  having  the  real  structure  of  the  thing  dis- 
played and  made  artistically  effective.  The 
differences  are  very  great;  thus,  a  piece  of 
furniture  or  a  carved  box  may  be  and  per- 
haps should  be  as  constructional  as  a  piece 
of  architecture,  but  a  dish  or  a  pot  receives 
nothing  from  its  first  maker  except  a  gener- 
ally agreeable  form,  and  the  richer  part  of 
its  adornment  is  applied  afterwards  and  may 
contradict  utterly  the  original  conception. 
And  then  decorative  art  must  be  considered 
as  including  those  objects  which  have  no 
very  obvious  utility,  such  as  vases;  and 
others  which  have  no  constructional  nature 
at  all,  such  as  carvings  in  wood,  ivory  and 
cystal  or  jade,  which  are  made  for  artistic 
enjoyment  alone,  as  absolutely  as  a  statue 
or  a  painting.  It  is  perhaps  a  forcing  of 
the  meaning  of  the  term  to  speak  of  these 
as  objects  of  decorative  art,  but  that  is  the 
accepted  term. 


T 


HE    MINOR    DECORATIVE 
ARTS.    (15) 


The  minor  decorative  arts  are,  as 
has  been  said  above,  called  by 
that  seemingly  disparaging  name  merely 
because  of  their  minor  importance  to  the 
active  outside  world.  To  the  world  of  con- 
templation which  is  the  only  one  known  to 
the  student  of  fine  art  there  is  no  minor  and 


no  major  art,  except  as  the  one  contains 
more  thought  or  better  applied  thought. 
A  small  ivory  carving  may  contain  more 
intelligent  artistic  handling,  which  is  another 
way  of  saying  that  it  may  contain  more 
artistic  thought  of  the  right  kind,  than  a 
cathedral;  and  in  fact  our  cabinets  are  full 
of  just  such  diminutive  works  of  art,  valu- 
able and  interesting,  but  commanding 
respect  from  but  few  persons,  while  the 
streets  of  all  modern  cities  are  lined  by 
buildings  devoid  of  artistic  thought  of  any 
significance  at  all,  which,  however,  command 
respect  because  of  their  cost  and  their  size. 
It  is,  however,  true  that  a  large  work  of  art 
has  a  chance  to  be  more  important  than  a 
small  one.  A  cathedral  may  be  a  finer 
thing  than  an  ivory  carving  can  possibly  be 
A  marble  monument,  such  as  one  of  the 
wall  tombs  in  Santa  Croce  or  the  Frari 
Church,  or  the  Cathedral  of  Fiesole,  is  often 
a  finer  thing  than  a  small  bronze  figure 
even  of  the  same  epoch  can  possibly  pretend 
to  be.  Speaking  of  a  very  great  living 
artist,  an  American  painter  of  first  rate 
standing  and  of  excellent  judgment  and 
authority  said  to  the  writer  not  long  ago  that 
it  was  easy  to  overrate  the  achievements  of 
a  man  who,  after  all,  painted  only  studies 
and  sketches.  "What  is  to  be  said  of  the 
productions  of  the  giants?"  said  Elihu  Ved- 
der.  "What  have  you  left  to  say  for  the 
works  of  Correggio,  if  you  use  such  adjec- 
tives as  are  now  fashionable  for  the  living 
man  of  whom  we  are  speaking,  who  in  his 
life  never  produced  a  great  composition? 
Studies  and  sketches  of  no  matter  what  ex- 
cellence are  inferior  to  elaborate  paintings 
of  similar  relative  excellence."  That  is 
absolutely  true,  and  in  the  same  way  it  is 
absolutely  true  that  the  colored  carving  of 
the  Nikko  Mausoleum  is  a  finer  thing  than 
the  best  of  the  ivory  and  wood  carvings  and 
moldings  in  porcelain  clay,  which  are  con- 
temporaneous with  the  Nikko  Temples,  or 
are  later  studies  from  the  same  general 
scheme.  In  European  art  a  great  mural 
painting  may  easily  be  a  better  thing  than 
an  easel  picture  four  feet  long  can  be,  and 
that  picture  in  its  turn  is  in  the  way  of 
being  finer  than  a  water  color  study,  and  so 
on  down  the  scale  and  up  the  scale.  Let  no 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


GROUP    OF    DEDHAM    POTTERY. 


one  suppose  that  the  students  of  pure  art 
are  indifferent  to  bigness!  but  bigness  is  in 
itself  only  a  small  virtue,  and  indirectly  it 
is  but  a  moderate  addition  to  the  opportuni- 
ties given  the  artist. 

If  then  we  note,  as  every  one  must  have 
noted,  that  the  modern  dilettante  seldom  has 
an  eye  for  the  work  of  decorative  art  in  the 
usual  sense  of  that  word,  and  thinks  almost 
exclusively   of   the   paintings 
hanging  on  the  walls,    it  will 
be  found  also  that  the  same 
dilettante    cares    nothing    for 
architecture  in  its  truly  artistic 
character.     He  likes  a  Gothic 
cathedral  because  of  its 

"high  embowed  roof 
With  antique  pillars  massy  proof" 

and  he  has  associations  with 
this  building  and  that,  or  with 
this  or  that  class  of  buildings. 
His  mind  has  quotations  in  it: 

"O'er  England's  abbeys  bends  the 

sky 

As    o'er    its    friends,    with    kindly 
eye." 

And  so  of  Greek  art — of  which 
he  knows  and  can  know  noth- 


ing of  himself, 
for  Greek  art  has 
to  be  revived 
from  the  dead 
each  time  that  we 
seek  to  judge  it 
— the  poet  has 
written : 

"Earth  proudly  wears 

the  Parthenon 
As  the  best  gem  up- 
on her  zone" 

and  association 
does  the  tiick. 
Also  he  may 
think  well  of  ar- 
chitecture  be 
cause  it  is  such 
an  important 
civic  art,  so  big 
and  significant  of 
royalty,  or  eccle- 
siastical pomp,  or 

municipal  pride.  It  may  be  noted  that 
modern  architecture  retains  those  qualities. 
Of  other  decorative  art  than  this  it  may  be 
said  that  the  enjoyment  of  it  is  limited  to 
the  collectors  and  to  the  very  few  hard- 
working students  familiar  with  museums  who 
are  like  collectors  in  knowing  the  individual 
pieces  of  decoration  and  in  estimating  them 
at  their  worth.  The  field  is  so  very  large 


JAPANESE    LACQUER. 

This  is  the  side  of  a   lunch  box.      The   upper  horizontal  line  shows  the  section 
for  the  lid,  the  lower  one  that  for  the  superimposed  box. 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


53 


that  it  is  only  by  long  continued  comparison 
of  piece  with  piece,  of  motive  with  motive, 
of  inspiring  idea  with  idea  that  any  adequate 
critical  sense  of  the  value  of  pieces  of  dec- 
oration is  generally  attainable.  Thus  it 
happens,  to  return  to  a  statement  made  a 
few  lines  above,  that,  when  a  visitor  reaches 
a  house  full  of  works  of  art  of  many  kinds, 
he  has  eyes  for  the  water  colors  and  still 
more  for  the  oil  paintings  in  frames  upon 
the  walls — eyes  of  a  very  different  kind  from 
those  which  he  turns  upon  the  carvings,  the 
inlays,  the  porcelains,  the  lacquers,  the 
richly-adorned  utensils  and  weapons  which 
are  the  collector's  spoil  of  the  ages.  This 
state  of  things  is  not  to  be  remedied  except 
by  a  study  of  fine  art  considered  as  fine  art, 
and  without  reference  to  the  stories  told  by 
it;  and,  as  the  promotion  of  such  study  is 
the  very  object  of  this  set  of  lessons,  there 
seems  excuse  for  dwelling  here  upon  the 
conditions  precedent. 

The  next  lesson,  then,  must  needs  be 
devoted  to  some  enumeration  of  the  varie- 
ties of  minor  decorative  art,  exactly  as 
above,  in  the  first  lesson  devoted  to  painting, 
the  different  branches  of  painting  and  the 
different  arts  subsidiary  to  and  dependent 
upon  painting  were  enumerated. 


o 


THER   MINOR   DECORATIVE 
ARTS.    (16) 


The  varieties  of  decorative  art 
differ  from  one  another  im- 
mensely. Thus,  to  take  at  once  what  seem 
to  be  extreme  cases,  the  ballet,  or  in  Other 
words,  artistic  and  carefully  prepared  danc- 
ing, has  an  important  ornamental  side  to  it, 
and  no  ballet-master  is  worthy  of  his  posi- 
tion who  does  not  understand  how  to  make 
his  stage  very  beautiful,  not  only  by  the 
dress  and  the  pose  of  his  dancers,  the  color 
and  play  of  light,  etc.,  but  also  by  the  har- 
monious succession  of  movements,  in  which 
many  persons  acting  together  may  produce, 
and  as  is  well  known  do  often  produce,  a 
charm  not  obtainable  in  any  other  art  which 
appeals  to  the  eye.  In  like  manner  the 
arrangement  and  display  of  fireworks  is  a 
decorative  art  of  importance  ignored  too 


much  because  identified  with  childish  anni- 
versaries and  celebrations  of  no  intellectual 
worth,  but  capable  of  being  so  administered 
as  to  appeal  to  a  somewhat  refined  sense  of 
what  is  good  in  art.  As  an  extreme  opposite 
to  this,  consider  the  treatment  of  carving 
studied  from  those  aspects  of  nature  which 
are  certainly  not  generally  susceptible  of 
representation  in  sculpture,  such  as  the 
waves  of  the  open  ocean  or  the  breakers  on 
the  beach — a  mountain-side  or  the  pine  tiees 
clustering  upon  it.  All  these  things  have, 
however,  been  treated  in  sculpture,  and  that 
not  merely  in  the  more  pictorial  panels  of 
bronze  doors,  as  described  above,  but  in 
carvings  upon  oriental  ivory  boxes  and  in 
stumps  and  joints  of  bamboo. 

This  has  been  done  with  an  intelligence 
which  has  sufficed  to  make  the  suggestion  of 
these  forms,  which  are  never  to  be  imitated  in 
the  art  of  form,  as  valuable  almost  as  the  sug- 
gestion given  of  the  body  of  man.  A  piece 
of  wood  two  feet  long  is  carved  into  a  canoe, 
into  an  effigy  of  one  of  those  gigantic  canoe- 
shaped  vessels  of  the  Eastern  Sea,  and  the 
edge  of  this  canoe  is  set  thick  with  little 
figures  of  men  in  their  dress  as  sailors. 
Examination  shows  that  this  piece  of  wood 
is  the  outside,  husk,  shell,  what  you  please, 
the  solid  part,  in  short,  of  an  enormous  piece 
of  bamboo,  one  which  when  complete,  must 
have  measured  ten  inches  in  diameter. 
The  inside  of  the  canoe  is  the  natural  inside 
of  the  shell.  The  exterior  retains  its 
silicious  polish  over  the  greater  part  of  its 
surface ;  and  we  are  forced  to  observe  that 
the  length  of  bamboo  in  question — that 
which  we  call  erroneously  the  joint,  mean- 
ing thereby  the  length  between  two  joints — 
has  been  curved  lengthwise,  probably  by 
artificial  means,  before  the  carving  was 
begun. 

A  piece  of  metal  forming  the  grip  of 
a  sword  has  been  carved  into  the  sem- 
blance of  a  draped  headless  figure,  the  head 
of  which  is  supplied  by  the  pomel  of  the  hilt, 
which,  put  on  separately  and  screwed  up 
tight  upon  the  tang  of  the  blade,  holds  the 
grip  firmly  in  place  and  completes  at  once 
the  lethal  weapon  and  the  work  of  decorative 
art.  In  all  such  cases  the  standard  of  ad- 
miration, or  more  properly,  the  standard  of 


54 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


judgment,  keeps  varying1  according  to  the 
appliances,  the  technical  skill  involved,  the 
nature  of  the  materials,  and  the  consequent 
work  needed  upon  the  materials.  A  carving 
in  jade  cannot  be  judged  as  a  work  of  design 
alone;  the  student,  no  matter  how  single- 
minded  a  student  of  art  he  may  be,  is  com- 
pelled to  think  of  the  marvelous  technical 
skill  shown  in  that  which  all  jade  collectors 
estimate  so  highly,  the  completeness  of  the 
polish.  A  cup  with  a  sprig  of  leaves  in  the 
bottom,  all  cut  o\\t  of  the  same  piece  of 
jade,  may  be  a  common-place  thing  enough, 
and  be  worth  in  China  four  hundred  taels; 
or  it  may  be  worth,  if  the  polish  is  of  extra- 
ordinary perfection  and  is  carried  through 
under  the  stems  and  leaves,  as  if  they  had 
not  been  there  when  the  polishing  was  done, 
twenty  thousand  taels.  Such  differences  as 
those  really  exist,  and  they  have  nothing 
surprising  for  the  trained  students  of  such 
matters. 

There  is,  moreover,  in  such  refinements  of 
decorative  art,  a  very  considerable  amount 
of  what  seems,  for  the  moment,  imitation. 
Thus,  in  the  stone  inlays  which  we  call  Flor- 
entine mosaic,  the  breastpins  and  tops  of 
paper  weights  which  used  to  be  in  fashion 
were  but  feeble  and  scrappy  examples  of 
what  is  turned  out  by  the  Florentine  ateliers. 
If  one  examines  the  famous  specimens  of 
the  art — the  panels  in  the  Greater  Sacristy 
of  San  Lorenzo,  or  the  table  tops  in  the 
Pitti  Palace,  he  will  see  strange  vagaries. 
He  will  see  designs  of  flower  and  fruit  in 
which  background,  stem,  leaf,  blossom, 
insect  are  all  most  successfully  imitated,  so 
far  as  their  colors  and  shading  go,  by 
selected  pieces  of  natural  stone,  all  flat,  all 
smooth  and  polished  on  a  continuous  sur- 
face; but  he  will  see  also  that  the  little 
fruits,  cherries  and  apricots,  are  in  high 
relief,  each  cherry  standing  up  by  what 
seems  half  its  diameter  above  the  surface 
around  it.  Is  this  very  important  or  very 
interesting?  Probably  not  to  most  students: 
to  the  student  of  the  loftier  arts  this  is  baby- 
ish enough ;  and  so,  in  the  very  beautiful 
carvings  of  the  Japanese  which  are  almost 
imitation,  the  fish  sculptured  in  mother-of- 
pearl  with  eyes  of  beryl,  the  lotus  leaves 
carved  in  ivory  and  stained  with  careful  and 


skillful  gradations  of  green,  the  work,  how- 
ever delicate  and  subtle,  seems  childish; 
innocent  enough,  even  acceptable  as  a  part 
of  a  great  world  of  decorative  art  which 
contains  everything,  the  large  and  the  im- 
pressive as  well  as  the  small  and  dainty,  but 
still  childish,  a  thing  which  no  one  ought  to 
care  very  much  about. 


CDSCAPE  ARCHITECTURE. (17) 
Consider  now  the  artistic  treatment 
of  landscape.  This,  of  course,  is  of 
all  kinds,  from  that  of  almost  indefi- 
nitely great  scope,  where  hundreds  of  acres 
are  treated  with  regard  to  the  resulting 
effects,  or  where  palaces  costing  large  sums 
are  so  grouped  with  natural  forms  or  seem- 
ing-natural forms  that  a  single  great  compo- 
sition results,  down  to  the  door-yard  of  the 
suburban  resident  with,  as  Mr.  Olmstead 
has  put  it,  a  single  Chinese  porcelain  seat 
under  a  tree  for  the  point  of  sight,  and  the 
paths  so  arranged  around  tree  and  seat  that 
all  these  features  of  the  garden,  each  and 
all,  seem  inevitable,  seem  to  have  always 
been  there,  seem  to  be  part  of  the  ordi- 
nance of  nature.  Landscape  gardening  is 
divisible  in  practice  into  the  laying  out  of 
parks  for  their  own  sakes  and  the  laying  out 
of  grounds  around  buildings.  This  division 
is  generally  capable  of  being  established. 
Even  where  both  kinds  of  landscape  garden- 
ing come  together  within  the  same  area  they 
are  generally  divisible,  the  terraces  of  the 
great  manor  house  and  the  formal  flower 
gardens  with  straight  paths  and  flights  of 
stone  steps  generally  ending  abruptly,  and 
the  park  proper,  with  its  natural  or  seem- 
ingly natural  hillsides  and  hollows  and  irreg- 
ular clumps  of  trees  duly  succeeding.  The 
park  and  the  garden;  those  are  the  two 
departments  of  the  art. 

One  of  the  most  perfect  parks  in  Europe 
is  the  English  Garden  in  Munich,  where 
Count  Rumford  in  the  last  century  disposed 
a  great  tract  of  ground  so  that  it  now  con- 
sists of  large  irregular  rounded  lawns  com- 
pletely sxirrounded  by  dense  growths  of 
immense  trees:  and,  as  the  roads  and  wider 
paths  are  within  the  tree  -  grown  area, 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


55 


PARK    OF    SANS    SOUCi,    POTSDAM. 
A  striking  example  of  the  artistic  treatment  of  landscape. 


nothing  else  is  visible  as  you  look  across  the 
lawn  except  the  canalized  arms  of  the  Iser 
where  the  water  runs  with  headlong  speed. 
The  finest  gardens  are  those  of  a  few  palaces 
and  certain  Italian  villas;  and  here  there  is 
room  for  individual  choice,  between  the 
great  displays  made  by  the  steep  hillsides  of 
the  Alban  mountains  where  the  papal  villas 
are  and  all  the  ring  of  summits  above  Genoa 
where  the  seventeenth  century  nobles  cai- 
ried  up  their  ladder-like  walks  to  height 
above  height  as  if  in  search  of  the  clouds — 
and  the  absolute  flatness  of  Versailles,  and 
the  slope  of  the  Sans  Souci  Park  at  Pots- 
dam. 

And  in  the  smaller  undertakings  of  men 
or  municipalities  of  smaller  means  the 
same  distinction  is  visible.  Architects  who 
are  successful  with  their  country  houses, 
large  and  small,  will  tell  you  that  they  care 
greatly  about  their  tree  planting,  and  that 
the  power  of  setting  a  tall  and  pointed  ever- 
green exactly  where  it  should  be,  on  the 
flank  of  a  long  stretch  of  frame  house,  is 
almost  as  important  to  them  as  the  privilege 
of  putting  their  chimney-stack  where  they 


want  it  with  a  view  to  the  exterior  design  of 
the  whole.  It  is  urged  that  this  is  unfair — 
that  the  architect  should  not  handicap  the 
owner  in  this  way — that  the  house  should  be 
independent  of  extraneous  conditions;  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  is  surely  reasonable 
that  the  architect  should  say :  I  can  do  some- 
thing with  the  house  alone,  but  I  can  do 
more  with  the  house  plus  the  trees.  So,  in 
the  case  of  the  city  park;  a  small  one  con- 
taining from  8,000  to  20,000  square  feet, 
there  are  disagreements  among  the  thought- 
ful, and  a  decided  difference  of  opinion,  as  to 
whether  this  park  should  refer  in  its  design 
to  the  straight  lines  of  buildings  which  hem 
it  in,  or  whether  it  should  not  rather  contra- 
dict them,  whether  its  trees  should  not  plant 
them  out  and  conceal  them;  so  that  the 
citizen,  once  escaped  from  the  unmitigated 
burden  of  the  streets,  may  escape  as  com- 
pletely as  possible  into  the  conditions  of 
greenery  and  rural  surroundings.  These 
differences  of  opinion  are  worth  citing  here 
because  they  illustrate  what  we  must  con- 
sider carefully  before  this  series  of  essays 
finishes,  the  view  which  the  student  is  to 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


PROCESSIONAL   ARCH. 

Designed  by  C  J.  Mulligan  and  erected  for  the  Deiuey  celebra- 
tion in  Chicago. 


take  of  differing  and  even  contradictory 
criticism  when  it  comes  from  sources  which 
he  cannot  wholly  disregard. 

A  kindred  art  is  the  arrangement  and 
adorning  of  processions,  fetes,  celebrations, 
and  this  again  is  divisible  into  two  main 
branches.  There  is  the  adornment  of  the 
streets  and  avenues  by  structures  which 
are  or  might  be  permanent,  triumphal 
arches  and  masts  which,  if,  indeed,  they  are 
not  to  remain  might  easily  be  permanent, 
and  which  are  designed  on  the  same  lines, 
whether  permanent,  or  temporary;  and 
secondly,  the  arrangement  of  the  moving 
display  itself,  a  thing  which  is  of  necessity 
momentary.  Does  any  one  remember  now 
the  picture,  famous  enough  twenty  years 
ago,  of  the  entry  of  Charles  V.  into  Ant- 
werp? The  picture  here  meant  was  by 
Makart,  the  Austrian ;  but  there  have  been 
one  or  two  similar  paintings  of  later  times. 
As  paintings  they  amount  to  little.  They 
are  bits  of  archaeological  display,  attempts 
to  fill  canvases  with  gorgeous  reminiscences 
of  the  past;  the  painting  is  little,  but  the  cer- 
emony which  it  represents  must  have  been 
an  important  thing.  So,  in  very  modern 
times  there  have  been  antiquarian  revivals 
in  the  flesh,  in  the  living  actuality,  and  not 


in  pictures.     It  is  not  infrequent  in  parts  of 
Europe  to  have  a  deliberate  revival  of  the 
past  in  some  ceremonial  procession  or  even, 
as  Mr.  Hamerton  has  pointed  out,  a  hunting 
party;  the  whole  thing  copied  as  closely  as 
archaeological    knowledge    allows   from   the 
more  artistic  times  gone  by.     And,  finally, 
to  have  done,  as  we  are  compelled  to  have 
done,  with  the  outlying  decorative   arts  of 
this  genus,  there  is  stage  decoration  in  the 
way  of  scenery  and  in  the  way  of  stage  set- 
ting.    Of  this,  indeed,  something  has  been 
said  above  in  connection  with  the  dance,  but 
there  is  no  theatrical  performance  which  can 
afford  to  dispense  with  decorative   disposi- 
tions on  and  about  the  stage,  and  we  mod- 
erns have  this  peculiar  reason  for  admiring 
and  encouraging  this  art,  namely,  that  it  is 
an  art  of  our  modern  time.     The  actors  of 
Shakespeare's  time  and  those    of   Garrick's 
time   knew  nothing  of  it.     What  it  was  to 
the  Greeks  we  can  only  guess,  dreaming  of 
its  probably  exceeding  beauty.     What  it  is 
to  some  Orientals,  as  to  the  Japanese,  we  can 
partly  judge.     It  is,  has  been  and  may  be 
as  important  a  decorative  art  as  any.      The 
stage  is  almost  the  only  refuge  of  the  deco- 
rative artist  who  wishes  to  use  his  intelligence 
for  such  compositions  as  involve  the  placing 
and    the    movements    of    living    men    and 
women.     That   it   is   commonly  ruined   by 
maquillage    and    make-up,    that    the    most 
important  parts  of  the  picture  are  destroyed 
by  the  ill-wearing  of  splendid  garments  and 
the  ill-conceived  adornment  of  the  face,  all 
made  worse,  in  many  cases,  by  the  unnatural 
and  falsely  imagined  lighting  from  below  up- 
ward, is  nothing  against  the  importance  of 
the  art  in  itself,  which  has  shown  itself  on 
certain  occasions  one  of  the  most  efficient  of 
all  our  modern  systems  of  decorative  design. 


WORKMAN  AND  ARTIST.  (18) 
Recurring  now  to  the  pecul- 
iarities  of    architectural   fine 
art  it  is  to  be  observed  that  an 
important  distinction  exists  in  this   and  in 
the  smaller  decorative  arts  which   employ 
painting,  carving,  modeling  and  the- like  be- 
tween those  classes  of  work  which  are  done, 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ART. 


57 


preferably,  by  the  workman  who  uses  such 
wits  and  such  good  taste  as  nature  and  the 
masters  of  his  apprentice-life  have  given  him 
and  those  which  are  of  necessity  brought 
into  shape  by  the  very  highly  trained  artist, 
the  studio-made  man,  the  academician,  or  his 
like.  The  arts  of  different  epochs  differ  in 
the  amount  of  decorative  work  done  by  the 
artisan.  It  is  a  commonplace  of  our  school- 
books  that  this  work  was  so  done  to  a  nota- 
ble degree  in  the  Middle  Ages.  There  were 
then  no  artists,  in  the  modern  sense,  no  men 
forming  a  class  apart  and  devoting  them- 


What  we  do  know  beyond  any  prob- 
ability of  going  very  wrong  is  the  gen- 
eral truth  that  the  artist  of  the  time 
was  one  who  traveled  from  place  to  place 
and  did  such  stone-cutting  and  such  paint- 
ing on  stone  walls  as  the  Fates  allowed 
and  as  the  bishops  and  barons  were  ready 
to  order;  or  else  a  stay-at-home  master  of  a 
shop,  painting  shields  of  arms  and  ornamen- 
tal caskets  or  gilding  and  stamping  boiled 
leather  fur  crests  and  quivers,  or  carving 
the  more  delicate  parts  of  massive  oak  fur- 
niture. He  was  a  workman  like  other  work- 


ENTRY    OF    CHARLES    V.     INTO    ANTWERP. 
By  Hans  Makart,  Austrian  Painter,  1840-84.      The  nude  figures  are  not  historic,  but  due  to  the  painter'1  s  fancy. 


selves  to  artistical  design  alone,  but  rather 
a  great  community  of  very  highly  trained 
stone-dressers  and  wood-workers,  of  whom 
some  were  singularly  able,  and  that  not  in 
mechanism  alone.  We  know  too  little  about 
the  actual  daily  life  of  the  people  in  the 
thirteenth  century  to  be  sure  of  the  relations 
between  the  very  able  men  who  wrought 
the  statues  of  the  porches  and  the  inferior 
workmen  who  were  employed  upon  simple 
molded  work,  piers,  parapets,  and  tracery: 
fine  work  enough,  but  not  involving  the 
artist's  final  touch. 


men  and  his  pay  was  not  so  very  much 
higher  than  other  workmen's  pay;  until  such 
time  as  the  important  undertaking  required 
the  well-known  man,  and  then  some  offers 
which  might  well  be  thought  tempting  in  so 
simple  an  age  were  found  necessary  to  lure 
him  from  his  native  town  to  the  cathedral 
city  or  the  semi-royal  strong  castle  in  the 
country.  We  are  compelled  to  omit,  from 
sheer  inability  to  follow  it,  all  consideration 
of  the  artist's  position  in  antiquity,  but  as 
for  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  times  that  suc- 
ceeded them  there  is  no  doubt  that  the 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


tendency  to  let  the  workman  do  his  own 
designing,  strong  in  the  thirteenth  and  four- 
teenth centuries  throughout  Europe,  disap- 
pearing in  Italy  in  the  fifteenth  century, 
though  still  strong  in  the  north,  became 
weaker  in  the  time  of  the  classical  Renais- 
sance, and,  between  Bramante  and  Van- 
vitelli,  disappeared  almost  wholly  from  the 
world.  Not  altogether  so,  however.  Wher- 
ever there  is  traditional  art  there  is  a  class 
of  artistic  workmen.  Even  to-day  in  a 
small  French  town  you  will  find  wood  carv- 
ers who,  working  on  a  large  scale  in  oak  or 
with  minute  delicacy  in  boxwood,  will  give 
you  carving  in  the  style  of  Louis  XIV.  and 
in  the  style  of  Louis  XVI.  which  you  will 
not  be  able  to  tell  from  the  originals.  There 
are  some  who  are  masters  even  of  the  French 
Renaissance  and  who  can  carve  in  the  style 
of  Francois  I.,  or  even  in  the  two  styles  of 
Francois  I.  and  Henri  II.,  and  distinguish- 
ing or  fancying  that  they  distinguish  be- 
tween the  two  ways  of  handling.  In  a  sense 
this  is  traditional  work;  and  when  one  has 
bought  a  presumably  genuine  eighteenth- 
century  panel  he  will  not  do  so  badly  if  he 
employs  carvers  of  the  provincial  town  in 
which  his  find  has  been  made  to  complete 
the  cabinet  with  friezes  and  minor  parts 
elaborately  carved  in  the  style  set  by  the 
large  panel  itself. 

Still,  in  spite  of  the  lingering  of  certain 
traditions  in  the  more  artistic  parts  of 
Europe,  there  is  a  new  era  in  decorative 
art,  and  especially  in  the  great  master  art 
of  architecture,  in  which  era  we  are  still 
living,  and  the  end  of  which  is  not  yet 
visible. 

The  new  era  began  apparently  with  the 
close  of  the  French  Revolution  and  the 
re-settlement  of  Europe.  From  that  time 
on  it  has  been  free  to  every  one  to  build  in 
the  style  he  might  select,  and  the  result  is 
the  negation  of  all  principles  and  the 
absence  of  all  valuable  architecture.  It  is 
also  true  that  all  the  decorative  arts  have 
suffered  as  architecture  has,  but  there  must 
be  recorded  this  peculiarity,  the  decorative 
arts  which  are  not  architectural  have  almost 
of  necessity  a  great  deal  of  representative 
sculpture  and  painting  in  them.  You  must 
almost  of  necessity  go  to  the  highly  trained 


sculptor  or  painter  if  you  want  anything  very 
fine  in  the  way  of  carving,  bronze  work,  dec- 
orative painting,  or  the  like.  It  is  hardly  to 
be  imagined  that  in  the  European  world  any 
long  continued  practice  of  decoration  can  go 
on  without  the  employment  of  the  sculptor 
and  the  painter  and  that  of  high  rank  and  of 
artistic  training.  But  as  we  have  seen,  the 
sculptor  and  the  painter  in  their  arts  get 
fresh  life  every  time  they  have  suffered  from 
decadence,  a  fresh  life  from  the  renewed 
study  of  nature ;  and  decorative  art  shares 
in  this  improved  condition  of  things  every 
time  that  it  can  be  said  to  take  form.  But 
that  which  is  the  salvation  of  architecture, 
that  which  alone  can  revivify  this  art  which 
has  no  study  of  nature  behind  it,  is  the 
renewed  study  of  structure.  Every  great 
architectural  epoch  has  had  a  new  system  of 
building  at  the  heart  of  it.  One  reason  why 
the  world  was  ready  to  abandon  its  exclusive 
devotion  to  neoclassic  at  the  time  of  the 
re-settlement  of  Europe  in  1815,  was  the 
long  previous  continuation  of  building  with- 
out any  novel  or  any  very  intelligent  system 
of  construction  within  it.  During  the  nine- 
teenth century  there  has  not  been  any  new 
system  of  building  developed,  and  conse- 
quently there  has  been  no  revival  however 
much  that  revival  may  have  been  longed 
for  and  worked  for — no  revival  of  architec- 
ture: and  the  time  has  been  so  long,  the  bad 
ciistoms  have  been  so  strong,  the  prevalence 
of  the  false  system  so  universal,  that  the 
European  world  has  got  out  of  the  way  of 
thinking  that  it  is  even  possible  to  build 
intelligently  or  to  decorate  at  all. 

Now,  with  the  closing  years  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  a  new  system  of  building 
has,  indeed,  taken  form.  It  appears  to  be 
developing  itself  into  an  almost  universal 
system  of  building;  but  unfortunately  it  is 
not  in  the  hands  of  artists.  The  men  who 
control  it,  who  understand  it,  who  are  lead- 
ing it  forward  step  by  step  toward  a 
greatness  which  we  do  not  yet  fully  under- 
stand, have  received  no  artistic  training 
whatever;  they  recognize  no  artistic  tradi- 
tions. Even  the  architects,  when  they  touch 
upon  this  system  of  steel  posts,  bars,  and 
rods,  lose  their  hold  on  so  much  of  ancient 
practice  as  has  remained  to  them,  and, 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


59 


allowing  the  engineers  to  build  what  they 
like,  pretend  to  make  architecture  of  it  by 
enclosing  it  in  something  which  is  derived 
from  a  radically  different  way  of  building. 

It  is  very  hard  for  us  to  judge  of  our  own 
time  but  it  does  seem  that  the  reason  why 
there  is  no  architecture  to-day  and  why 
there  has  been  none  of  any  consequence 
since  1815  is  the  willingness  of  the  designers 
to  build  in  any  style  which  may  be  fashion- 
able for  the  moment,  or  which  their  em- 
ployer may  call  for,  or  which  the  individual 
architect  himself  has  taken  a  fancy  to.  So 
far  as  we  know  there  will  never  be  any 
improvement  in  artistic  architecture  so  long 
as  these  conditions  obtain.  Whether  there 
is  any  hope  for  the  future  we  are  unable  to 
say.  The  increase  in  learning  and  in  the 
ambition  of  our  architects  seems  to  count 
for  nothing  because  this  increase,  evident  as 
it  is,  and  great  as  we  may  hope  to  find  it, 


does  not  tend  in  any  way  to  unanimous 
action  on  the  part  of  these  men,  learned  and 
enthusiastic  as  they  may  be.  It  is  on  this 
account  that  the  student  of  modern  archi- 
tecture-is necessarily  a  student  only  of  slight 
and  unimportant  buildings,  buildings  with- 
out significance,  illustrative  of  nothing  more 
than  momentary  flashes  of  opinion  or  of 
taste,  deduced  from  nothing,  traceable  and 
leading  to  nothing  obvious.  On  the  other 
hand,  decoration  of  minor  objects,  the 
decorative  treatment  of  utensils  and  pro- 
duction of  works  of  art  which  are  not  on  a 
grand  scale  has  improved  marvelously 
within  a  few  years.  The  most  forlorn  time 
for  the  fine  arts  of  which  we  have  any  recol- 
lection is  that  epoch  which,  beginning  with 
1820  came  to  an  end  during  the  excitement 
of  the  Gothic  Revival  in  England,  the 
religious  movement  in  France,  the  Purist  or 
Pietist  reform  in  Germany;  that  is  to  say, 


WROUGHT    IRON   GATE. 
Ky  Ernst  Melaun. 


6o 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


the  years  from  1820  to  1850  were  about  as 
dull  and  as  inartistic  as  could  be,  and  the 
years  following  were  but  slowly  seen  to  be 
any  better  in  this  respect.  The  London 
Exhibition  of  1851,  the  Paris  Exhibitions  of 
1855  and  1867,  the  Viennese  Exhibition  of 
1873,  all  of  these  marked  small  forward 
steps  in  the  way  of  the  understanding  of  the 
conditions,  of  art  and  the  power  of  the  artist 
over  its  different  forms.  Since  1873  there 
has  been  much  noble  decorative  work  in 
painted  tiles,  in  ornamental  windows,  in 
bronze  and  silver,  in  wrought  iron  work. 
And  so  the  century  closes  with  this  curious 
condition  of  things — an  immense  advance  in 
the  refinement  and  the  originality,  vivacity 
and  significance  of  work  in  the  small  bronzes, 
in  furniture,  in  keramics,  in  interior  deco- 
ration of  various  forms,  and  in  many  of  the 
kindred  minor  arts,  while  there  is  at  the  same 
time  a  visible  absence  of  good  taste  about 
dress,  even  the  dress  of  women  having 
become  more  and  more  insignificant  and 
trivial  as  time  has  gone  by,  and  the  great 
art  of  architecture  is,  so  far  as  we  can  judge, 
at  a  standstill.  It  is  at  a  standstill  because 
that  which  we  mistake  now  and  then  for  an 
evidence  of  advance  is  nothing  more  than 
skillfully  applied  archaeology. 


T 


HE      NATURE      OF     ARTISTIC 
THOUGHT.  (19) 


The  full  discussion  of  the  different 
forms  of  art  which  has  been  given 
in  Lessons  (i)  to  (19)  has  seemed  necessary 
because  there  is  no  understanding  the  in- 
ward significance  of  art  without  understand- 
ing its  external  form.  The  reader  is 
reminded  of  what  was  said  at  the  com- 
mencement of  this  inquiry,  namely  that  in 
the  arts  of  design  the  language  was  of 
peculiar  importance  and  its  comprehension 
of  peculiar  necessity.  The  language  of  art, 
as  employed  by  a  Chinaman  carving  in  jade 
and  that  employed  by  a  Frenchman  model- 
ing a  colossal  group  for  the  front  of  a  public 
building  are  practically  the  same,  even  as 
the  language  employed  by  the  writer  of 
verses  for  an  advertisement  and  that  em- 
ployed by  Wordsworth  in  writing  his  Eccle- 


siastical Sonnets  is  the  same;  but  the  part 
played  by  language  in  the  work  of  plastic 
art  is  more  important  than  that  played  by 
the  language  of  words  in  the  rhyming 
verses. 

An  examination  of  the  nature  of  artistic 
thought  is  next  in  order.  It  has  been  sug- 
gested above  that  one  purpose  of  the  sketch 
or  the  study  made  in  clay  or  wax  by  the 
sculptor,  made  in  lead  pencil,  in  pen  and 
ink,  or  in  water  color  by  the  painter  or 
sculptor  or  architect  or  decorative  designer, 
might  be  and  would  generally  be  the  preser- 
vation of  such  a  thought.  Even  as  a  novel 
writer  notes  down  an  incident  which  has 
occurred  to  him  (and  it  is  on  record  that  the 
elder  Dumas  stopped  in  Paris  streets  and 
said  to  himself,  thinking  of  the  plot  of  "An- 
thony," that  here,  indeed,  was  a  dramatic 
thought) :  even  as  the  writer  of  verses 
bethinks  himself  of  a  turn  to  be  given  to  a 
stanza  which  has  troubled  him  much,  so  the 
designer  in  the  arts  which  appeal  to  the  eye 
is  eager  to  lose  no  part  of  his  perfect  recol- 
lection of  the  bright  thought  which  the 
sleepless  hours  of  the  night  or  the  casual 
incidents  of  the  day  may  have  brought  into 
his  mind. 

What,  then,  is  this  artistic  thought?  It  is 
generally  a  thought  in  pure  form,  in  pure 
color,  in  pure  light  and  shade ;  or,  at  most, 
a  thought  of  how  a  certain  form  once  secured 
will  give  a  certain  system  of  light  and  shade, 
or  of  how  a  certain  note  of  color  once  fas- 
tened on  the  canvas  will  serve  for  a  combi- 
nation of  light  and  shade.  In  other  words, 
the  artistic  thought  is  not  often  more  complex 
than  this — that  a  certain  arrangement  of 
patches  and  gradations  of  color,  or  a  certain 
arrangement  of  gradations  alone  in  one  and 
the  same  color  or  negation  of  color,  such  as 
gray  passing  into  black,  or,  finally,  a  certain 
modulation  of  the  exterior  surface  of  a  solid 
mass,  will  produce  a  certain  effect  upon  the 
intelligent  observer.  The  artist's  thought 
which  he  desires  to  fix  and  hold  is  generally 
as  simple  as  this:  but  it  is  not  always  so 
simple.  Thus,  the  sculptor,  while  he 
imagines  a  beautiful  combination  of  rounded 
surfaces,  sees  also  as  it  flashes  across  his 
mind  an  opportunity  long  sought  of  express- 
ing something  about  the  facts  of  anatomy 


K.  ^H 

S^     <! 
S     § 


S 
S 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ART. 


which  he  has  never  seen  expressed  to  his 
own  satisfaction.  He  thinks,  in  that  un- 
worded  meditation  which  it  is  very  hard  for 
any  one,  hardest  of  all  for  himself,  to  put 
into  words — he  thinks  that  if  he  can  secure 
those  gradations  of  surface  which  to  him 
mean  the  muscles  of  the  thigh  and  of  the 
calf  he  can  also  lead  up  from  that,  better 
than  he  has  ever  succeeded  in  doing  it,  to 
those  similar  subdivisions  of  surface  which 
mark  the  articulation  of  the  knee.  Or  the 
painter  may  have  a  thought  as  complicated 
as  this:  If  I  can  paint,  as  I  now  see  it,  the 
head  and  neck  inclined  toward  the  specta- 
tor, I  can  secure  also  an  expression  of  the 
subtle  modeling  on  top  of  the  shoulder  from 
the  muscles  of  the  neck  down  to  the  shoul- 
der joint;  and  I  am  sure  that  no  living  man 
has  'ever  done  that. 

Or,  to  take  a  case  far  more  elaborate  in 
seeming  conditions  but  probably  more  simple 
in  its  conception  in  the  artist's  mind,  the 
painter  may  have  the  thought  of  a  battle- 
piece  in  which  it  will  be  possible  to  express 
at  the  same  moment  the  ponderous  advance 
of  an  enormous  force  of  heavy  cavalry  and 
in  the  near  foreground  such  a  play  of  sword 
cut  and  thiust,  such  a  mingled  and  headlong 
action  of  flight  and  pursuit,  such  a  con- 
fusion of  man  and  horse  in  close  and  des- 
perate struggle  that  this,  added  to  the 
weight  of  the  coming  charge  seen  beyond, 
shall  give  in  one  moment  the  effect  which 
is  in  his  mind,  the  true  expression  of  the 
formidable  action  of  mounted  men  on  the 
field  of  battle.  And  observe  that  the  action, 
the  weight,  the  force,  at  once  ponderous  and 
swift-moving,  of  cavalry,  is  rendered  not  in 
the  language  of  words;  for  with  this  his 
thought  has  nothing  to  do;  he  sees  it  as 
expressed  in  the  language  of  outline  and 
color. 

The  struggle  between  the  cuirassiers  in 
the  near  foreground  and  the  violent  action 
of  each  man  and  horse:  the  movement  of 
him  who  throws  back  his  body  from  the 
waist  upward  in  order  to  interpose  his  long- 
bladed  saber  and  parry  the  thrust  which 
threatens  his  life,  of  him  who  thrusts,  of 
him  who  makes  a  sweeping  cut,  of  him  who, 
terrified,  is  crouching  almost  upon  his 
horse's  neck  with  furtive  backward  glance 


as  he  spurs  out  of  the  tangled  fight,  of  him 
who  interposes  to  stop   the  blow  which  is 
aimed  at   his  unconscious  comrade's  head; 
these  matters  of   drawing,  and   with   them 
the  play  of  color  on  steel,  on  white  cloth,  on 
dark    blue    cloth,    on    dusky   red    cloth,    on 
floating  plumes,   and  on   sweat  bedrabbled 
hides  of  horses  of  two  colors — these  are  the 
elements  which  make  up  the  artistic  thought, 
the  perception  rather  than  the  conception, 
the  thing  seen  in  the  mind's  eye  rather  than 
the  thing  thought  out,  which  concerns  the 
foreground  of  the  picture  and  the  one  half 
of    its    significance.     The    distant    somber 
mass  of  horse  and  man  dimly  seen  through 
clouds  of   red   dust,   the   glittering  of  steel 
points  seen  through  that  dust,  the  pennons 
just    distinguished     above    the    cloud,    the 
delicate    change   of   direction    in    the    main 
lines    which    show    how    the    whole    great 
column  of  cavalry  is  swinging  into  the  heai  t 
of   the   picture  and  toward  the  foreground 
struggle,  and  particularly  the  general  color 
mass  and  the    combination  of   many  colors 
into   one   color   effect — this    makes   up   the 
artistic  perception  of  the  other  half  of  the 
picture 


A 


RTISTIC  QUALITIES  OF  THE 
WORK  OF  ART.  A,  COMPOSI- 
TION. (20) 


What,  then,  are  the  abstract  prin- 
ciples which  underlie  a  work  of  art?  What 
are  the  elements  which  make  up  the  artistic 
thought,  and  wherein  does  a  noble  thought 
of  this  kind  differ  from  one  more  trivial  or 
more  unworthy,?  There  is,  first,  in  the 
making  up  of  the  separate  parts  of  the  pic- 
ture, whether  these  were  each  the  result  of 
a  flash  of  thought  or  whether  some  of  them 
had  to  be  built  up  by  slow  meditation  and 
the  combining  of  several  thoughts — there  is 
first  the  matter  of  grace  of  line  or  of  mass. 
The  passing  of  an  outline  into  another,  as 
of  the  shoulder  and  arm  into  the  other  out- 
line of  the  horse's  neck  and  head,  or,  on  the 
other  hand,  into  that  of  the  nearly  straight 
line  distinctly  marked  by  the  glittering  edge 
of  the  saber:  the  correspondence  of  the 
mass  afforded  by  two  horses'  heads  in  close 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


proximity  to  the  other  mass  formed  by,  let 
us  say,  the  heads  and  shoulders  of  two  strug- 
gling soldiers;  the  array  of  lances  or  of 
blades  seen  above  the  heads  of  the  crowd, 
wide  separated  and  glittering  over  the  whole 
field,  as  in  Dore's  famous  picture  in  the 
series  of  "The  Wandering  Jew,"  or  concen- 
trated and  heading  all  one  way,  as  in  many 
of  the  very  latest  and  most  realistic  pieces 
of  battle  painting  where  "push  of  pike"  is 
illustrated  as  the  principal  subject;  the 
bounding  line  of  a  crowded  group  echoed 


by,  whether  they  know  the  cause  of  their 
pleasure  or  not.  Thus,  in  Blashfield's  great 
ceiling  in  the  Astoria  Hotel  the  ring  of 
musicians  is  bound  together  with  singular 
firmness  and  determination  of  line  by  the 
sweeping  curves  of  drapery — the  bounding 
outlines  of  the  figures;  but  a  curious  radia 
tion  of  the  straight  firm  lines  of  the  musical 
instruments  contradicts  this  and  threatens 
at  the  first  glance  to  tear  the  composition  to 
pieces.  It  is  not  until  a  second  look  shows 
how  much  stronger  is  the  concentration  than 


By  Edouard  De faille,  French  painter, 


ATTACK    ON    A    CONVOY. 

8 — .An  episode  of  the  Franco-Prussian    War  in  which  the  artist  participated ;  and  a 
good  example  of  "push  of  pike.'" 


and  imitated  by  the  bounding  line  of  a  pair 
of  trees  or  by  the  bounding  line  of  a  distant 
mass  of  men,  of  trees,  of  hill,  of  unwooded 
rolling  ground:  the  combination,  now  of 
outline,  now  of  heavy  masses,  is  the  first 
and  primal  thought  in  most  artistic  compo- 
sitions. It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  same  thing 
obtains  in  sculpture.  In  mural  painting  it 
is,  of  course,  one  of  the  great  desiderata; 
there  is  nothing  that  the  executor  of  paint- 
ing on  a  large  scale  craves  more  eagerly  or 
that  his  admirers  are  more  easily  affected 


the  scattering,  how  irrach  firmer  are  the 
bounding  lines  than  the  divergent  lines,  that 
the  spectator  is  not  merely  reconciled  to  the 
contradictory  effect  of  the  two  sets  of  lines 
but  delighted  by  it:  that  which  threatened 
to  destroy  being  proved  the  greatest  possi- 
ble element  of  strength.  It  is  so  that  a  dis- 
cordant note  in  music  put  in  the  right  place, 
a  harsh  and  in  itself  disagreeable  ingredient 
in  a  salad,  but  in  just  sufficient  quantity, 
redeems  the  whole  from  monotony  and 
insignificance  and  makes  a  triumph  of  what 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


would  otherwise  have  been  less  markedly 
successful. 

If  this  composition  carries  with  it  the 
literary  or  historical  or  narrative  sense  as 
well,  it  may  prove  to  be  more  powerful. 
The  artistic  thought  hardly  includes  the  idea 
of  narration,  of  the  statement  of  fact,  of 
relating  or  teaching  anything;  but  the  man 
who  has  the  artistic  thought  may  also  have 
the  semi-literary,  the  semi-historical,  the 
didactic  .'thought  as  well.  Thus,  in  the  bat- 
tle picture  previously  imagined  (see  Page 
64)  the  picture  as  described  may  be  thought 
to  be  top  much  lacking  in  a  central  feature. 
It  consists  of  two  parts  and  those  very  decid- 
edly separated  the  one  from  the  other;  and 
the  first  impression  made  upon  the  observer 
is  that  it  needs  a  central  point  to  tie  the 
whole  together.  But  no  one  can  say  how 
far  that  central  point  may  be  replaced  by 
the  sentiment  of  unity;  by  the  known,  and, 
indeed,  the  visible,  the  apparent  fact  that 
the  mass  of  cavalry  in  the  background  is 
sweeping  forward  to  the  relief  and  the  sup- 
port of  the  fighters  in  the  near  foreground 
who  have  evidently  dashed  in  upon  the 
retreating  enemy.  Such  a  replacing  of  a 
physical  and  visible  central  point  by  one 
which  the  imagination  supplies  would  be 
impossible  in  purely  decorative  art,  such  as 
for  instance,  architecture.  He  would  be  a 
feeble  designer  who  would  tell  you  that  his 
church  did  not  need  the  cupola  or  the  fleche 
at  the  crossing  of  the  transept,  because  the 
eye  of  the  beholder  was  at  once  reconciled 
to  its  absence  by  reason  of  his  knowledge 
that  just  there  the  vaults  of  the  transept  and 
of  the  nave  meet  and  for  a  moment  coalesce. 
That  is  possible  in  the  design  which  has  a 
piece  of  general  non-artistic  significance 
behind  it,  which  might  not  be  possible  in  an 
abstract  design,  as  in  pure  decoration. 

Imagine  a  piece  of  abstract  coloring  as 
when  a  panel  is  to  be  painted  with  cloud- 
ings, spottings,  wavings,  floating  forms, 
suggested  perhaps  by  nature  but  descriptive 
of  nothing  in  nature.  Such  a  panel  must 
be  extremely  perfect  in  the  beauty  of 
abstract  line  and  in  the  purity  of  gradation 
from  tint  to  tint  through  an  indefinite  num- 
ber of  delicate  and  indescribable  variations 
of  color.  But  if,  by  chance,  the  artist  is 


representing  sunset  clouds,  and  the  observer 
sees  at  once  that  he  is  painting  a  sunset, 
then  a  certain  sharpness,  harshness,  violence 
of  line  or  of  mass  may  be  allowed  him, 
because  it  will  appeal  to  the  spectator's 
remembrance  of  sunsets  which  he  has  seen 
and  which  in  like  manner  contained  surpris- 
ing and  even  for  the  moment  unwelcome 
passages  of  shadow  or  of  color. 

This  union  of  the  purely  artistic  and  of  the 
recording  or  the  narrative  thought  is  to  be 
seen  in  the  lines  and  the  surfaces  which 
express  the  artist's  sense  of  construction. 
There  appears  to  be  no  better  phrase  in 
which  to  express  this  vastly  important  ele- 
ment in  the  excellence  of  the  work  of  art. 
Allusion  has  been  made  to  it  before,  espe- 
cially in  the  lessons  concerning  sculpture;  as 
where  the  action  of  leg,  thigh,  and  foot  all 
expressing  the  same  momentary  violent  or 
strenuous  action  was  insisted  on.  The  same 
thing  is  visible  in  landscape,  as  where  in  a 
well-known  picture  by  Homer  Martin  the 
painting  represents  a  flat-bottomed  small 
valley  through  which  you  look  to  the  sea, 
at  Newport.  On  either  side,  a  rocky  hill 
is  seen  rising  abruptly  from  the  meadow 
which  makes  the  flat  of  the  valley.  Now,  it 
is  obvious  at  once  to  the  person  who,  even 
without  experience  in  paintings,  is  accus- 
tomed to  look  at  nature  that  the  rocky  struc- 
ture existed  beneath  the  meadow  which  is 
therefore  shown  to  be  a  plain  of  deposit, 
sand,  or  marsh,  it  is  indifferent  which — a 
mass  of  accumulated  sand  or  soil  having 
nothing  to  do  with  the  rocky  structure  of 
that  part  of  the  earth's  surface.  But  Martin 
is  of  all  painters  the  one  who  most  disre- 
gards the  mere  accidental  or  unimportant 
facts  of  the  landscape.  One  of  his  most 
admirable  pictures  is,  to  the  present  writer's 
knowledge,  made  up  out  of  a  couple  of  trees 
which  struck  the  artist's  eye  and  his  impres- 
sionable mind,  and  which  were  not  placed 
as  he  would  have  had  them  placed.  To 
glorify  those  trees  other  trees  in  clumps, 
studied  in  neighboring  or  distant  fields 
were  brought  together,  and  the  drawing  of 
the  ground  below  was  modified,  and,  finally, 
a  still  surface  of  sleeping  water  was  put  at 
the  foot  of  the  trees  to  partly  reflect  their 
color  and  form  and  so  emphasize  and  insist 


66 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


upon  the  essential  fact  of  the  picture.  This 
illustrates  at  once  the  independence  which 
the  true  artist  feels  unconsciously  of  all  the 
visible,  evident  facts  of  the  situation  and 
the  strong  sense  he  has  of  the  essential 
facts;  for  the  almost  wholly  imaginary  pic- 
ture is  as  strong  in  its  truth  of  surface,  in 
hill,  in  gradual  slope,  in  still  water  and  in 
old  and  sapling  trees  as  the  picture  which  is 
much  more  closely  a  copy  of  an  existing 
scene. 

This,  then,  is  to  be  included  in  the  gen- 
eral idea  of  composition.  The  lines  and  the 
modulated  surfaces,  whether  in  sculpture  or 
in  painting,  which  express  structure  are  to 
be  looked  for  and  reckoned  with.  A  com- 
position less  seemingly  graceful  may  be 
redeemed  by  the  recognition  of  these  im- 
portant natural  truths  as  a  composition 
which  ignores  them  may  be  soft  and  value- 
less in  spite  of  its  delicacy  of  abstract  line. 


A 


RTISTIC    QUALITIES  OF    THE 
WORK  OF  ART.    /?,  COLOR.  (21) 


Artistic  thoughts  which  are  chiefly 
in  terms  of  color  are  most  easily 
understood,  as  they  are  most  important  and 
most  decided  in  the  matter  of  painting;  but 
they  exist  in  all  the  arts  which  appeal  to  the 
eye.  Thus,  a  sculptor  may  well  reject  a 
scheme  of  his  own  or  of  a  pupil  because, 
though  admirable  in  its  suggestion  of  ana- 
tomical truth,  force,  dignity,  or  the  like,  it  is 
evidently  incapable  of  producing,  when  em- 
bodied in  marble,  plaster  or  bronze,  a  charm- 
ing effect  of  delicate  lights  and  shades. 
These  lights  and  shades  are,  of  course,  full 
of  color,  delicate  and  subdued  color,  but 
color  as  far  removed  from  pure  black  and 
white  as  are,  to  the  ordinary  eye,  the  strong- 
est combinations  of  reds  and  blues.  The 
sun  is  good  enough  to  attend  to  that,  and  to 
provide  that  none  of  the  out-of-door  shadows 
of  his  world  shall  be  black,  as  none  of  his 
lights  are  white.  And  in  doors,  though  the 
sun  is  not  made  welcome  as  he  should  be, 
the  pale  reflection  of  his  power  gives  us 
something  of  that  natural  coloring  of 
shadows  and  of  shades  which  may  or  may 
not  be  aided,  may  or  may  not  be  marred,  or 


even  nearly  overcome  by  the  cross  lights 
and  subordinate  color  reflections  of  our  walls 
and  ceilings.  The  tints  which  modulate  for 
our  eyes  the  surface  of  the  statue  are  so 
very  subdued  that  in  the  large  hall,  or  in  the 
crowded  and  richly  -  adorned  apartment 
though  smaller,  they  are  lost;  something  of 
that  has  been  said  above  when  it  was 
imagined  that  a  statue  should  stand  in  a 
gallery  of  strong  paintings.  It  was  on  this 
account  that  the  ancients  colored  and  the 
Orientals  have  always  colored  their  statuary; 
or,  at  least,  this  was  the  chief  reason.  The 
glare  of  an  unclouded  sun  on  the  one  hand, 
the  semi-darkness  of  a  closed  interior  on  the 
other  hand,  either  may  be  fatal  to  the  sculp- 
tor's thought  in  form,  if  it  remains  unaided 
by  the  strong  emphasis  possible  to  him  who 
uses  painting  and  gilding  to  help  out  his 
design. 

Still,  the  general  color  thought  is  different 
from  this.  And  here  it  must  be  noted  that 
very  few  painters  among  all  the  thousands 
whose  names  are  recorded,  and  among  the 
hundreds  whose  names  and  works  are  nota- 
ble and  form  part  of  our  history — that  few 
among  them  all  have  made  color  their  chief 
object.  It  seems  strange  that  this  should 
be  so;  for,  of  all  the  means  of  expression 
possible  to  the  painter  this  one  of  color  is 
the  only  one  which  is  absolutely  and  exclu- 
sively his  own.  The  sculptor  can  vie  with 
him,  can  perhaps  out-do  him,  in  the  expres- 
sion of  form  by  itself,  and  even  of  form  when 
tinted  or  invested  with  what  we  ordinarily 
speak  of  as  color,  that  is,  with  differentiated 
aspects  which  in  a  certain  way  correspond 
to  the  different  bars  of  the  spectrum.  Our 
vocabulary  breaks  down  in  this  case,  as  in 
so  many  cases  above.  We  have  no  means 
of  distinguishing  between  color  considered 
as  a  mighty  engine  of  thought  and  color  in 
the  very  different  sense  of  contrasted  yellow 
and  purple.  There  is  however,  the  con- 
venient phrase  "local  color,"  which  means 
the  general  look  of  the  thing,  as  seen  in 
common  daylight.  The  local  color  of  grass 
is  green,  in  spite  of  the  yellowness  of  it  in 
sunshine ;  but  green  is  not  generally  wel- 
come to  painters  who  love  color  and  so  they 
avoid  it?  Is  not  that  contradictory  enough 
to  excuse  any  outcry  for  a  new  terminology? 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART, 


It  is  a  fact  that  there  are  many  painters  who 
have  mainly  studied  and  drawn  in  light  and 
shade,  and  who  seem  to  have  invested  their 
work  afterward  with  the  local  colors,  with 
yellow,  blue,  green,  or  some  modifications  or 
tints  of  those  colors,  while  there  are  but  few 
comparatively  who  think  primarily  in  color. 
When  La  Farge  says  of  Delacroix  that  he 
was  the  chief,  the  leading  painter  of  the 
century  (the  exact  words  are  perhaps  imma- 
terial), he  means,  it  is  absolutely  certain  that 
he  means,  that  Delacroix  was  the  first  of 
those  who,  in  the  nineteenth  century,  looked 


regio  was  one  of  the  greatest  of  colorists, 
one  of  the  most  powerful  thinkers  in  color 
which  the  world  has  known,  and  the  highly 
trained  observer  is  startled  by  noticing  that 
the  Sistine  vault  of  Michelangelo  is  an  aston- 
ishing work  in  color,  although  there  the 
coloring  is  pale  and  high-keyed  rather  than 
impressive  and  somber,  but  partly  because 
in  fresco,  and  not  in  oil-painting,  having  a 
peculiarly  calm,  pale  glory  of  its  own.  The 
world  goes  on  talking  about  Michelangelo  as 
if  he  were  merely  a  master  of  form,  and  about 
the  paintings  in  the  Sistine  as  if  they  had  been 


SACRED    AND    EARTHLY    LOVE. 

An  allegorical  picture  by  Titian,  in  the  Borghese  Gallery,  Rome.    No  more  precise  interpretation  than  that  indicated  in  the 

title  is  known. 


upon  the  colored  look  of  the  world  as  the 
important  thing,  and  thought  mainly  in 
terms  of  color.  Every  one  knows  that  this 
is  the  characteristic  of  the  great  Venetian 
school.  Titian  is  commonly  ranked  as  the 
first  of  colorists,  and  after  him  come  such 
masters  as  Veronese  among  the  later  men, 
Giorgione  among  men  of  Titian's  own  time 
(though  he  died  young,  whereas  Titian  lived 
the  century  out),  Bellini  among  the  men  of 
the  previous  generation.  These  are  the  men 
whom  every  one  thinks  of  when  the  word 
colorist  is  used ;  but  in  the  same  way  Cor- 


painted  in  monochrome ;  until  a  painter  and 
a  trained  thinker,  and  one  who  has  accus- 
tomed himself  to  translate  into  the  language 
of  words  the  powerful  language  of  painted 
design,  stands  below  that  vault  and  points 
out  to  the  surprised  world  of  art  students 
that  here  also  is  a  mighty  piece  of  coloring. 
So  Rembrandt,  who  to  the  hasty  observer 
is  hardly  a  colorist,  proves  also  to  be  a  great 
thinker  in  terms  of  color,  although  he  so 
combines  his  color  thoughts  that  the  aggre- 
gate result  seems  rather  to  be  a  noble  and 
weighty  monochrome  of  golden  brown. 


68 


THE   TECHNIQUE  AND 


THE    COUNTESS    SPENCER. 
By  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds.    An  example  of  breadth  in  portraiture. 


T 


HE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE 
TERM  BEAUTY  IN  THE  ARTS 
OF  DESIGN.(22) 


There  are  a  number  of  technical 
terms  in  common  use  among  writers  upon 
art,  which  terms  convey  undoubtedly  some 
meaning  to  the  reader  and  sometimes  the 
right  meaning,  but  which  are  still  open  to 
serious  misunderstanding.  Thus,  there  are 
such  terms  as  breadth  or  a  broad  treatment, 
strength  or  strong  drawing  or  strong  paint- 
ing, and  such  terms  of  general  application 
as  grace,  variety,  contour,  flow,  decision  and 
terms  in  the  way  of  adjectives  made  from  or 
belonging  to  those  nouns  which  adjectives 
are,  perhaps,  still  more  commonly  in  use. 
Chiaroscuro  means  simply  light  and  shade, 
or  perhaps  light  and  shade  treated  systemat- 
ically. Color  relations  is  an  awkward  phrase 
meaning  merely  that  deliberate  and  at  least 
partly  successful  combination  of  colors  which 
makes  up  a  design  in  color.  Delineation 
means  drawing  by  lines,  outlining,  and 
something  more,  the  representation  of 
everything  in  a  figure  or  a  group  of  figures 
which  can  be  expressed  by  separate  lines 


bounding  and  expressing  the  different  parts 
of  the  figures,  drapery,  etc. ;  or,  at  least,  a 
large  number  and  the  more  important  of 
those  different  parts  and  details.  This  mat- 
ter of  drawing  by  lines  is  one  which  is  the 
special  characteristic  of  certain  schools  of 
painting;  and  there  are  some  writers  on  art 
who  insist  upon  the  necessity  of  such  out- 
line drawing  as  the  basis  of  all  good  work  in 
art,  while  there  are  others  who,  regarding 
the  unquestioned  success  of  painters  who 
ignore  this  sort  of  work  almost  wholly,  con- 
clude that  it  is  not  always  and  uniformly  a 
primal  necessity.  But,  as  for  the  terms 
given  above,  they  are  generally  phrases 
which  may  be  used  successfully  under  cer- 
tain conditions.  Thus,  a  piece  of  sculpture 
is  strong  if  on  the  one  hand  the  figures  are 
firmly  set  upon  their  feet,  the  pose  and  car- 
riage of  the  limbs  and  body  significant  of 
strength  in  the  life  which  is  suggested  by 
the  statue  or  figure  carved  in  relief,  or,  on 
the  other  hand,  if  the  modeling  of  even 
partial  surfaces  is  singularly  bold,  masterly 
and  effective.  Decision  implies  the  evi- 
dence of  firm  and  straight-forward  action  on 
the  part  of  the  artist  who  has  invented  or 
designed  the  group  or  the  painting,  and  the 
absence  of  any  show  of  doubt  in  his  own 
mind  as  to  what  his  intention  was.  Grace 
signifies,  of  course,  that  agreeable  flow  of 
line  or  of  surface  which,  whether  in  the 
living  person,  in  the  hillside,  in  the  group 
of  trees  or  a  work  of  art  is  abstractly  fine 
and  pleases  the  eye  in  a  gentle  and  subtle 
way.  In  short,  the  majority  of  such  terms 
explain  themselves,  and  there  is  not  much 
danger  of  misuse  of  them  so  complete  as  to 
throw  the  student  off  his  proper  line  of 
investigation. 

There  are  still  several  important  side 
truths  connected  with  fine  art,  and  several 
terms  conveying  more  or  less  accurately  the 
significance  of  those  truths,  all  of  which 
need  explanation.  As  these  terms  are  used 
more  with  regard  to  painting  than  to  other 
forms  of  art  it  is  best  to  confine  their  ex- 
planation to  the  terms  of  that  art.  Thus,  it 
is  hardly  possible  to  speak  of  values  or  of 
mystery  or  atmosphere  except  in  relation  to 
the  art  of  painting  in  some  of  its  forms:  and 
this  is  only  one  evidence  of  what  has  been 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


69 


said  above,  that  painting  is  much  the  most 
complex  and  difficult  to  understand  of  all 
the  arts,  while  still  it  is  that  one  to  which 
people  go  the  most  carelessly,  and  most 
often  with  the  idea  of 
being  amused. 

Consider,  for  i  n  - 
stance,  the  work  of  the 
so  -  called  Impression- 
ists, Claude  Monet, 
Edouard  Manet,  Ca- 
mille  Pissaro,  Raffaelli, 
Sisley,  Degas,  Besnard, 
and  the  ladies,  Miss 
Cassatt,  and  Madame 
Morizot.  The  world  of 
artists  is  itself  divided 
as  to  the  relative  im- 
portance of  their  works; 
and,  therefore,  within 
limits,  a  non-artist 
haunter  of  galleries  is 
free  to  approve  and  dis- 
approve; but  the  limits 
are  well  marked.  The 
facts  that  such  able  men 
have  done  the  peculiar 
work  under  considera- 
tion, and  that  such  life- 
long students  of  art 
have  admired  it,  states 
at  once  to  the  public  the 
nature  of  those  limits. 
The  artist  has  tried  for 
a  set  of  truths  which  are 
not  very  obvious — are 
not  on  the  surface  of 
things — which  are,  in 
fact,  somewhat  like  the 
blue  shadows  on  snow 
and  the  yellow  color  of 
grass  alluded  to  above. 

It  is  extremely  curi- 
ous that  the  English 
Preraphaelites,  of  all 
men  the  most  faithful 
to  delineation,  and 

preaching  the  most  rigidly  close  adherence 
to  the  models  actually  before  them  as  they 
drew,  and  the  French  "Impressionists,"  the 
reverse  of  their  English  predecessors  in  all 
these  respects,  should  have  hit  upon  the  same 


way  of  offending  careless  lookers  at  pictures. 
The  painters  of  each  of  these  schools  ex- 
press some  curious  truths  about  nature's 
light  and  color,  and  use  these  for  very  inter- 


GENIUS    GUARDING    THE    SECRET    OF    THE   TOMB. 

By  Saint  Marceaux,  contemporary  French  sculptor.    An  example  of  strength, 
and  forceful  modeling  recalls  that  of  Michelangelo. 


The  massive 


esting  art  works:  and  in  each  case  they 
receive  plenty  of  ridicule  and  very  little 
sympathy. 

The    great    set    of    fourteen    pictures    of 
Rouen  Cathedral,  all  taken  from  the  same 


7o 


TECHNIQUE  AND 


THE    QUEEN    OF   THE    CAMP. 

By  J.  G.  Jacquet,  contemporary  French  genre  painter.     One  of  many  possible  examples 
of  graceful  line. 


point  of  view  and  all  of  the  same  size, 
serve  to  explain  the  meaning  of  all  this. 
What  the  artist  was  trying  to  show  was 
the  importance  in  art  of  a  study  of  na- 
ture's effects  of  color  and  light,  or  rather 
of  colored  light.  He  says  to  the  public: 
Observe  that  this  Rouen  Cathedral  is  not 
one  thing,  but  as  many  things  as  nature 
chooses  to  make  it,  and,  in  art,  as  many 
different  things  as  the  artist  has  skill  to 
make  it.  Rouen  Cathedral  under  sunset 
light  to-day  is  a  very  different  thing  from 


that  which  I  saw  there,  in 
that  same  spot,  yesterday; 
and  if  you  will  get  up  to- 
morrow morning  before 
the  sun  you  will  see  again 
a  very  different  Rouen  Ca- 
thedral. Not  many  days 
ago  the  present  writer  saw 
from  Long  Island  south 
beach  a  little  wooden  ven- 
tilation tower,  sharply  de- 
nned against  the  smoke  of 
that  hideous  conflagration 
of  the  German  steamers 
and  their  lading  piers  at 
Hoboken,  which  was  then 
raging,  twenty-three  miles 
away:  and  all  against  a 
sunset  sky.  That  tower 
seemed  important,  a  mass 
which  influenced  the  land- 
scape; but  next  morning 
under  the  sunrise  light,  it 
was  what  a  photograph 
would  show  it,  a  very  com- 
monplace little  box  with 
a  pyramidal  roof. 

Why,  then,  if  the  truths 
of  natural  colored  light 
are  capable  of  being  ex- 
pressed by  simple  objects, 
by  sand-dunes,  orchard- 
trees,  sheds  and  shanties, 
why  does  the  artist  choose 
the  great  cathedral  ? 
Partly  for  its  size  and 
complexity  which  help 
him  to  show  off  the  con- 
trasts which  he  desires  to 
insist  upon,  but  partly 
also,  no  doubt,  from  a  desire  to  have  with 
him  the  sympathy  of  an  audience  who,  as 
he  suspects,  will  care  little  about  daylight  or 
evening  light,  but  a  great  deal  about  Rouen 
Cathedral.  The  artist  may  not  think  so 
much  of  your  sympathies  and  associations 
as  you  do,  because  he  has  artistic  thought 
to  express,  but  he  is  not  unaware  of  the 
advisability  of  "taking  his  audience  with 
him"  by  appealing  to  their  historical  and 
literary  sympathies. 

All  painting  tends  to  become  the  painting 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ART. 


73 


of  impressions;  and  it  is  not  out  of  the  way 
to  say,  as  has  been  said,  that  this  painting 
of  impressions  is  the  painter's  true  business 
in  life.  Why,  then,  is  the  particular  art  of 
the  small  French  school  above  alluded  to 
called  by  this  name?  There  is  no  proper 
reason  for  it.  It  was  a  mere  protest  on  their 
part  against  what  they  thought  was  the 
relative  blindness  of  other  artists  to  natural 
impressions.  They  adopted  the  name,  it 
would  seem,  from  the  same  motives  which 
have  led  a  peculiar  sect  of  Christians  to  call 
themselves  by  that  single  name,  Christians, 
without  qualification.  We,  at  least,  they 
seem  to  say,  we,  at  least,  will  paint  only  our 
impressions  of  nature ;  for  these  are  all  that 
any  man  should  paint  or  can  paint  with 
sincerity. 

The  above  named  painting  of  impressions 
is  in  color;  but  if  an  artist  sets  down  in 
black  or  in  the  brown  of  sepia  or  in  any 
single  tint  the  impression  made  upon  him 
by  a  colored  object,  what  he  does  is  trans- 
lating from  color  into  monochrome.  If  he 
puts  down  a  number  of  such  tints  graded 
one  into  the  other,  following  all  the  while 
the  colored  scene  before  him  and  translating 
it  continually  into  the  same  monochrome,  he 
is  making  a  transcript  from  nature  as  faith- 
fully as  the  difficulties  of  this  translation 
allow  him  to  make  it. .  These  monochro- 
matic tones  are  what  we  call  values.  A 
stone  may  be  grayish  blue  and  the  grass 
near  it  green,  on  a  cloudy  day,  and  yet  they 
may  be  expressed  by  exactly  the  same  shade 
when  you  are  drawing  "by  values"  in  mon- 
ochrome. The  stone  and  the  grass  are  each, 
in  the  impression  they  make  upon  the  artist, 
equally  far  removed  from  the  white  of  his 
paper,  which  is  the  highest  light  he  can  get. 
But  let  the  sun  come  out,  and  the  grass  will 
suddenly  spring  up  many  degrees  in  the 
scale;  and  now  a  monochrome  drawing, 
made  from  the  same  point  of  view  of  the 
same  stone  and  grass  after  the  clouds  have 
gone,  will  show  a  wholly  different  system  of 
values. 

The  present  writer  has  seen  the  famous 
cliffs  which  we  call  the  Palisades  on  the 
Western  bank  of  the  Hudson  River  come 
out  so  bright  in  the  morning  sunshine, 
while  clouds  were  dark  above  and  behind 


them,  that  those  bluish  gray  trap  rocks  were 
the  brightest  things  in  the  landscape  and 
several  degrees  higher  in  light  than  the 
clouded  sky.  A  drawing  of  this  scene  made 
accurately  "by  values"  would  be  a  most 
astonishing  piece  of  "impressionism"  and 
would  bring  down  upon  the  artist  a  great 
deal  of  ridicule.  It  appears,  then,  that  true 
drawing  by  values  would  be  "impression- 
ism" in  monochrome.  "Impressionism"  in 
color  is  merely  the  same  process,  the  artist 
unconsciously  exaggerating  the  unfamiliar 
blues  and  purples,  which  he  feels  as  if  he 
alone  had  discovered  in  the  shadows  of  the 
natural  scene.  For  it  is  in  the  shadows,  and 
in  the  shades,  which  are  the  sides  of  things 
turned  away  from  the  light,  that  the  beauti- 
ful colors  are  generally  to  be  found.  The 
sun,  though  he  creates  all  the  glory  of  color 
for  us,  eats  it  up  too,  and  where  his  full 
beams  are  shining  there  is  not  much  enter- 
tainment or  employment  for  the  colorist. 


s 


IGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  TERM 
BEAUTY  IN  THE  ARTS  OF  DE- 
SIGN.— Continued.  (23). 


There  are  two  other  words,  atmos- 
phere and  mystery,  which  perhaps  need  ex- 
planation. This  also  may  be  given  by  indirect 
approach.  When  we  speak  of  Turner's 
landscape,  the  art  of  that  extraordinary 
genius  who  worked  in  England  during  the 
first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  we  strike 
upon  a  subject  likely  to  excite  great  differ- 
ences of  opinion.  Excellent  critics  among 
the  artists  themselves  differ  very  widely  as 
to  the  importance  of  his  work.  The  reason 
for  this  is  primarily  that  Turner's  chief  mis- 
sion on  earth  was  to  paint  the  great  effects 
of  landscape,  especially  of  landscape  seen  at 
a  great  distance,  "wide  landscape"  as  we 
have  got  into  the  way  of  calling  it,  and  that 
during  his  maturity  he  felt  himself  drawn 
especially  to  cloud,  mist,  fog,  smoke — vapor 
of  all  sorts — and  the  wonderful  effects  pro- 
duced by  sunlight  shining  upon  and  through 
these  gases  and  films.  Now,  it  is  inevitable 
that  painters,  who  have  been  brought  up 
rather  to  believe  in  severe  drawing  and  in 
the  human  body  carefully  studied  as  the  be 


74 


THE    TECHNIQUE  AND 


all  and  the  end  all  of  painting-,  should  feel  a 
lack  of  interest  in  these  cloud  effects  of  Tur- 
ner's. And  then  the  man  was  not  free  from 
a  queer  theatrical  streak  which  ruined  some 
of  his  pictures,  and,  in  the  eyes  of  those  who 
did  not  discriminate  between  the  noble  and 
the  less  sincere  of  his  large  paintings,  has 
ruined  his  reputation  as  well.  Turner,  then, 
besides  being  one  of  the  greatest  of  all  pos- 
sible impressionists,  was  the  great  master  of 
atmosphere  and  mystery. 

For  what  is  atmosphere?  It  is  the  reap- 
pearance in  the  picture  of  that  effect  of 
distance  which  in  nature  is  given  by  the  hazy 
exhalations,  of  which  we  are  unconscious  in 
nature,  except  as  they  diminish  the  sharpness 
of  distant  objects.  And  what  is  mystery?  It 
is  the  artistic  use  of  this  atmosphere,  and  of 
those  imperfections  in  our  own  eyes  because 
of  which  external  nature  is  something  else  to 
us  than  a  seiies  of  sharply  outlined,  dis- 
tinctly seen,  clear  cut  objects.  A  painter 
who  lived  constantly  in  the  trade  -  wind 
region,  as  in  one  of  the  West  India  Islands, 
would  have  only  occasional  peeps  into  the 
mystery  of  nature;  everything  there  is  so 
distinct!  and  the  sun  rises  and  goes  down 
with  the  waves  of  the  Caribbean  Sea  dis- 
tinctly outlined  upon  his  disk.  He  who 
watches  sunrise  and  sunset  from  a  Vermont 
mountain  top,  will  not  in  sixty  consecutive 
days,  once  be  able  to  note  the  moment  when 
the  sun  clears  the  horizon  or  dips  behind  it; 
and  the  Vermont  painter  never  sees  nature 
except  through  a  veil  of  which  he  cannot  be 
unconscious.  The  deliberate  choice,  by  the 
great  Dutchmen  of  the  Seventeenth  cen- 
tury, of  gray  sea  and  lowering  sky,  was  one 
of  the  boldest  and  one  of  the  most  success- 
ful "new  departures"  in  the  history  of  art. 
Mystery  and  atmosphere  were  theirs:  and 
in  them  they  found  color,  grandeur,  dignity 
and  a  chance  to  express  in  landscape  the 
loftiest  artistic  thoughts. 

Finally  there  is  the  very  general  term, 
beauty,  which  requires  special  consideration. 
This  is  so  because  all  rightly  directed 
thought  upon  fine  art  insists  upon  its  pecul- 
iar nature  as  a  means  of  giving  a  lofty  and 
enduring  kind  of  pleasure.  Like  poetry, 
like  music,  the  arts  of  design  appeal  to 
those  loftier  powers  of  enjoyment  which  are 


akin  to,  though  different  from,  the  affec- 
tions. As  the  love  that  one  feels  for  a  close 
friend,  a  child,  a  native  town,  a  fatherland, 
a  cause,  is  a  source  of  the  highest  pleasure 
and  is,  indeed,  chiefly  known  to  us  and 
chiefly  valuable  to  us  because  of  this  singu- 
lar power  of  giving  pleasure  so  great  that  it 
is  what  we  generally  call  happiness, — so  the 
fine  arts  of  whatever  nature  have  it  in  their 
power  to  give  a  continued,  unceasing,  un- 
wearying, ineffable  enjoyment  to  those  who 
learn  to  read  their  language  and  to  think 
their  thoughts.  The  amount,  the  degree,  of 
this  enjoyment  is  absolutely  inexplicable  to 
him  who  has  not  learned  the  language  and 
the  aim  of  that  thought.  Theie  is,  we  all 
know  it,  the  familiar  old  expression,  "I 
would  not  be  as  learned  as  you;  I  should 
lose  so  much  pleasure  which  now  I  get  from 
the  things  which  you  despise."  The  answer 
to  this  is,  of  course,  that  the  pleasure  which 
such  a  person,  not  "learned,"  can  procure 
from  the  many  works  of  art  which  he  ad- 
mires is  as  nothing  to  that  which  comes  to 
the  more  critical  student  from  the  few 
which  alone  he  can  admire.  And  it  is  cus- 
tomary in  speaking  in  this  way  of  fine  art  to 
mention  "beauty"  as  the  object  of  fine  art. 
Beauty,  we  are  told,  not  moral  purpose,  not 
religious  enthusiasm,  not  narration,  is  the 
object  of  art. 

If,  then,  the  true  object  of  art  as  ex- 
plained throughout  this  series  of  Lessons  is 
to  be  expressed  by  the  single  term  beauty, 
that  word  must,  indeed,  have  a  definition 
somewhat  different  from  the  meaning  usu- 
ally given  it. 

Consider  Burns's  notable  poem,  "The 
Jolly  Beggars."  No  one  has  ever  denied 
the  astonishing  merit  of  that  poem  as  a  work 
of  art;  and  yet,  as  Matthew  Arnold,  prais- 
ing it  warmly,  has  truly  said  of  it,  it  is 
bestial;  bestial  in  subject  and  unmeasured 
in  its  descriptions  and  in  the  words  put  into 
the  mouths  of  the  personages  who  play  out 
the  hideous  drama.  Consider  Browning's 
story  of  the  girl  at  Pornic ;  there  is  his  own 
criticism  of  it,  "a  horrible  verse, "  an  account 
of  what  seems  unmitigated,  unmeasured  un- 
morality,  and  treated  in  harsh,  hard,  strain- 
ing stanzas.  Consider  the  bugle  call  which 
conveys  an  order  to  the  battle  line;  and 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


75 


HEAD    OF    MEDUSA. 
Ascribed  to  Leonardo  da   Vinci. 


the  boatswain's  whistle  with  its  expressive 
meaning  for  those  who  understand  its  lan- 
guage; or,  if  these  are  inadmissible  to  our 
argument  because  they  are  not  deliberately 
intended  to  be  works  of  art,  consider  the 
harsh  discords  which  go  to  make  up  the 
evolution  of  a  great  symphony,  occurring 
more  than  once  in  its  hour-long  out-rolling 
of  the  great  thought. 


s 


IGNIFICANCE     OF     THE    TERM 
BEAUTY  IN  THE  ARTS   OF  DE- 

SIGN.— Concluded.  (24) 

So,  in  the  graphic  arts,  think  of  the 
newly  found  statue 
of  the  seated  ath- 
lete, the  boxer  with 
his  armed  fists;  or 
consider  the  Me- 
dusa ascribed  to 
Leon  ardo  da 
Vinci;  or,  in  an- 
other plane  of  crit- 
icism, take  the 
archaic  statues  of 
early  Greece,  the 
unnaturally  awk- 
ward, ill  -  shaped, 

AN    EGYPTIAN    SCULPTURE.  inorganic    p  1  a  n  t  i- 

Ka  Statues  of  Ra-hotep  and  his  1   •    1 

Shter-Wife,  Nofret.  grade       which      W6 


call  the  Apollo  of  this,  the 
Apollo  of  that,  though 
they  are  more  probably 
votive  grave  statues, 
memorials  of  the  dead ; 
or  again  works  of  art  of 
such  a  point  in  the  deca- 
dence that  their  manner- 
ism is  oppressive  and  the 
very  character  of  their 
lines  and  colors  now  un- 
attractive to  the  eye  and 
mind  accustomed  to 
purer  and  sweeter 
things, — some  of  the 
paintings  which  have 
made  the  celebrity  of 
galleries,  the  Bronzino, 
the  Salvator  Rosa  of  this 
or  that  famous  room  in 

a  European  palace.  What  we  mean  when  we 
use  beauty  in  the  ordinary  sense  is  not  in 
those  things.  Ugliness  is  rath'er  their  key. 
There  are,  then,  very  different  ways  in 
which  a  work  of  graphic  or  plastic  art  may 
reject  or  refuse  beauty  as  its  principal  sub- 
ject: that  is  to  say,  beauty  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  the  word.  Archaic  sculpture, 
whether  Egyptian, 
with  a  recognized 
formalizing  and  stiff- 
ening of  the  human 
form,  or  Assyrian, 
with  a  convention 
different  from  that 
of  Egypt  but  equally 
apart  from  that 
which  we  consider 
the  beauty  of  human- 
ity ;  or  archaic  Greek, 
with  an  evident  striv- 
ing for  the  highest 
truth  but  with  a  sin- 
gular incapacity  to 
attain  it;  or  French 
twelfth  century,  with 
a  deliberate  altera- 
tion of  the  human 
lines  in  order  that 
the  architectural 
lines  may  be  glorified 
and  made  more  ad- 


AN    ASSYRIAN    STATUE. 


//  represents  Nebo,  God  of 
Letters, 


THE   TECHNIQUE  AND 


AN   ASSYRIAN    RELIEF. 

It  represents  Ea,  God  of 
the  Waters,  as  symbol- 
ized  by  the  fish. 


mirable  by  the  com- 
bination; or  early 
Italian,  with  an  as 
yet  half-remembered 
reference  to  the  ar- 
chitectural sculpture 
of  earlier  days — 
archaic  sculpture  in 
any  of  its  forms  is 
felt  to  be  noble  in  its 
purpose  and  is  seen 
and  known  to  have 
been  the  condition 
out  of  which  the  high 
and  ineffable  work  of 
the  next  succeeding 
epoch  was  to  come. 
On  this  account  we 
give  to  archaic  sculp- 
ture something  more 
than  in  itself  it  is 
entitled  to,  some- 
thing more  reserved  and  sympathetic  than 
hearty  admiration.  And  yet  in  itself,  and 
without  the  reference  to  the  greater  work 
to  follow,  it  is  worthy  still  of  much 
respect  and  is  capable  of  giving  much 
pleasure.  Even  a  bas-relief  of  a  time  long 
before  the  great  era,  found  shattered  and 
broken,  stained  in  spots  by  the  heavy  pig- 
ments left  from  the  coloring  which  invested 
it  once,  and  clogged  and  choked  with  the 
soil  which  has  not  yet  been  cleared  away 
from  it — even  such  a  bas-relief,  just  come 
to  light  amid  the  indurated  clay  of  the 
Grecian  field,  is  capable  of  giving  such 
purely  artistic  pleasure  as  defies  our 
attempts  to  fully  explain  it  even  to  a  fairly 
receptive  friend  who  may  have  been  absent 
when  the  find  was  made.  The  fact  seems 
to  be  that  the  artistic  thought  once  fairly 
expressed  has  power  to  excite  kindred 
thoughts  in  the  mind  of  the  beholder,  and 
that  these  kindred  thoughts  once  excited  in 
the  mind  of  the  beholder  are  capable  of 
giving  that  enduring  pleasure  which,  as  we 
have  said,  it  is  the  power  and  the  privilege 
of  the  fine  arts  to  give. 

When  you  listen  with  shut  eyes  to  the  de- 
velopment of  a  Beethoven  symphony,  the  long 
passage  which  is  marked  scherzo  has  power  to 


excite  risibility,  and  a  sympathetic  listener 
may  laugh,  or  feel  it  necessary  to  restrain 
himself  from  laughing  aloud,  with  no  cause 
for  his  cacchi nation  except  the  tickling  of  his 
sense  of  the  humorous  by  the  succeeding 
harmonies.  In  like  manner,  the  artistic 
treatment  by  Burns  of  the  filthy  and  un- 
speakably vicious  characters  of  his  drama, 
and  the  artistic  treatment  by  the  painter  of 
a  subject  of  no  matter  what  unspeakable 
immorality  or  horror  has  yet  the  power  of 
exciting  that  pleasure  which  the  fine  arts 
alone  can  give.  How  much  more  if  the 
offense  is  not  present,  and  if  the  power  of 
the  artist  to  select,  to  choose  and  to  modify 
has  full  sway.  There  are  scenes  in  nature 
which  are  extremely  ugly,  and  yet  the 
painter  can  so  handle  them  that  they  seem 
beautiful.  The  barest  rock,  the  muddiest 
pool,  the  most  desolate  sand-dunes,  the 
most  feeble  and  inexpressive  rolling  coun- 
try, the  flattest  prairie  just  burned  over, 
is  capable  of  such  treatment  by  the  land- 
scape painter  that  we  shall  always  love  his 
woik;  for  he  has  the  power  of  investing 
the  ugly  landscape  with  lovely  colors  and 
the  power  of  painting  above  it  a  sky  which 
he  can  make  as  splendid  as  he  pleases  with- 
out the  possibility  of  our  finding  fault  with 
either  the  verity  or  the  charm  of  his  con- 
ception. So,  in  some  complex  way,  the 
ugly  pose,  the  violent  gesture,  the  harsh 
face,  the  tattered  and  disfigured  garment, 
the  objects  and  phases  which  in  nature 
we  admit  to  be  repulsive  are  easily  made 
attractive,  once  the  artist's  handling  has  been 
given  to  them. 

The  purpose  of  these  remarks  is  to  show 
that  beauty,  if  we  must  use  that  word,  is  to 
be  considered  as  expressive  of  all  those  char- 
acteristics which  make  up  a  truly  worthy 
artistic  thought.  The  line  may  be  ugly,  but 
the  color  may  redeem  it.  The  mass  may  be 
clumsy  and  ill  balanced,  but  it  may  have 
subordinate  lines  of  extraordinary  beauty 
which  the  mind,  without  weighing  the 
quality  fully,  yet  recognizes  and  enjoys. 
The  subject  may  be  hateful,  but  the  treat- 
ment be  great.  Beauty  is  but  one  word  for 
an  adequate  and  satisfying  expression  of  a 
significant  artistic  thought. 


o 


line 


aitvtmq 


and 


^ 

IDccoratiotb 


IN  THEIIL 
^DEVELOPMENTS  PRINCIPLES 

HDITOIC*  IN  *  CHIEF 

EDMUND  BUCl(LEY1A.M.,PK.D.,UniversityofChicago 

CONSULTING  EDITORS 
J.  M  .HOPPIN.D.D.,  Yale  University 
ALFRED  V.CHURCHILL,A.M., 


fiilfy 


NATIONAL    ART    SOCIETY 
Chicago 


Copyright.  1907,  by  W.  E.  ERNST. 


DECORATIVE    COMPOSITION,    BY    JOHN    WILLIAMS. 

Details  purposely  omitted,  in  order  to  force  attention  to  the  composition.       Use   in  testing  the  rules  of  Brown,   Van  Brunt,  and 

Ross  in  Lessons  5  and  6. 


Representative  Judgments  on  the  Principles  of  Art. 


BY 


ALFRED  V.  CHURCHILL,  A.M. 

DIRECTOR    DEPARTMENT    OF    FINE    ARTS,    TEACHERS    COLLEGE,    COLUMBIA    UNIVERSITY. 


INTRODUCTORY. 
In  suggesting  a  series  of  elementary 
readings  on  art  principles,  my  desire 
is   to    present    to    the   reader  certain 
thoughts  which  may  assist  him  to  a  compre- 
hension of  art  from  the  inside,  that  is,  from 
the  standpoint  of  its  content  rather  than  its 
history  and  development.    We  want  to  know 
what  the  artist  felt,  not  what  the  archaeolo- 
gist has  found  out. 

The  material  offered  in  this  kind  to  the 
serious  student,  who  knows  nothing  about 
art  but  who  wishes  to  learn,  is  singularly 
scant.  What  there  is  must  be  sought  at 
wide  intervals  in  the  writings  of  men  whose 
work  was  intended  primarily  for  the  pro- 
fessional student.  The  most  helpful  sug- 


gestions have  been  made  in  various  volumes 
of  recent  years,  perhaps  most  notably  in 
G.  B.  Brown's  work  on  the  "Fine  Arts," 
although  there  is  no  work  which  fills  pre- 
cisely the  place  in  the  literature  of  the  arts 
of  design  which  is  occupied,  in  the  field  of 
music,  by  Mr.  Matthews'  volume  on  "How 
to  Understand  Music."  Miss  Emery's  little 
volume  on  "How  to  Enjoy  Pictures,"  has 
been  repeatedly  mentioned  to  me  as  having 
been  of  value  to  beginners. 

The  difficulties  of  producing  a  parallel 
work  for  the  arts  of  design  (by  arts  of  de- 
sign is  meant  those  arts  which  have  form 
and  color  as  their  basis)  are  of  course  great 
and  manifold.  The  forms  .of  graphic  art  are 
by  no  means  so  easily  set  forth  as  those  of 
music.  We  have  no  recognized  scale,  and 


79 


8o 


REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS 


no  science  of  harmony  and  counterpoint. 
We  cannot  speak  of  notes  and  chords  and 
resolutions  with  anything  approaching  the 
definiteness  which  attaches  to  analogous 
terms  of  the  sister  art.  And  perhaps  we 
never  shall  be  able  to  do  so,  although  these 
themes  are  absorbing  the  attention  of  gifted 
thinkers. 

In   default  of  these,   it  will  be  of  use  to 
us  to  consider  certain  thoughts  of  masters 


BSOLUTE    ART.(i) 


TITLE   PAGE    OF   A   MANUSCRIPT   OF    THE    KORAN 
FROM   THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 


whose  words  were  intended  for  the  initiated 
ear,  perhaps,  but  who  can  be  listened  to 
with  profit  by  those  who  have  the  will  to 
learn.  These  readings  are  informal  and 
incomplete.  They  merely  suggest  some  of 
the  considerations  which  control  the  painter, 
the  sculptor,  the  architect;  some  of  the 
qualities  which  the  good  workman  would 
fain  achieve,  and  which  the  longest  life  is 
all  too  short,  the  most  strenuous  exertion  all 
too  feeble,  to  compass. 


It  is  important  for  us  to  get  the 
idea  of  absolute  beauty  in  art 
apart  from  representation.  Music, 
for  instance,  has  the  power  to  please  the  ear 
and  the  mind  with  ordered  sounds.  This 
pleasure  is  produced  through  the  music 
quite  in  itself,  and  without  reference  to  any 
particular  images  which  it  may  bring  up 
in  the  mind.  This  is  especially  true  of 
classic  instrumental  music.  Such  art  as 
this  may  properly  be  designated  as  absolute 
music. 

It  is  somewhat  more  difficult  for  us  to 
conceive  of  absolute  art  in  design,  espe- 
cially in  painting.  But  this  is  a  necessary 
conception  and  will  be  found  enlightening 
to  the  reader.  If  we  think  of  such  examples 
of  art  as  the  finest  Turkish  rugs  and  other 
textiles  produced  in  the  great  art  epochs,  we 
see  at  once  that  there  is  a  "musical  value  of 
line  and  color,"  which  is  quite  independent 
of  representation. 

The  pleasure  we  have  from  these  things 
comes  into  the  mind  through  the  perception 
of  order  and  relation  in  color  and  line,  just 
as  in  music  through  order  and  relation  of 
notes.  We  please  ourselves  in  this  way 
every  time  we  select  a  dress  or  shirt  pattern. 
There  is  rarely  any  realistic  representation 
on  such  patterns.  (If  there  is  it  is  almost 
invariably  in  bad  taste.)  A  good  "flowered 
pattern"  is  almost  always  flat  and  conven- 
tional in  treatment.  In  primitive  pottery 
we  find  ornaments  which  are  beautiful  but 
mean  nothing — nothing  but  tlie  best  thing  of 
all,  the  satisfaction  of  the  inner  desire  of  the 
soul  for  order,  for  beauty. 

So  that  art  which  is  intended  for  the  eye 
must  satisfy  the  eye  with  its  intrinsic  beauty 
of  line  and  color,  quite  apart  from  the  thing 
represented.  If  the  painter  of  portraits  is  a 
great  artist,  his  work  will  have  the  qualities 
of  absolute  beauty  of  line  and  color.  They 
would  please  the  sympathetic  observer  even 
if  he  did  not  know  what  was  represented, 
even  if  the  picture  were  turned  upside  down. 
In  fact,  painters  often  do  turn  their  pictures 
upside  down  in  order  to  be  less  distracted, 
for  the  time  being,  by  the  thing  repre- 
sented, and  to  judge  their  color  and  line- 


ON  THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


81 


harmonies  disinterestedly.  The  student 
should  practice  the  same  thing. 

"He  believed  music  to  be,  in  a  sense,  the 
key  to  the  other  fine  arts,  since  its  essence 
is  pure  beauty;  that  space-art  may  be  called 
'visual  music,'  and  may  be  criticised  and 
studied  from  this  point  of  view.  Following 
this  new  conception,  he  had  constructed  an 
art-educational  system  radically  different 
from  those  \yhose  corner-stone  is  Realism. 
Its  leading  thought  is  the  expression  of 
Beauty  not  Representation." — A.  W.  Dow, 
"Composition,"  p.  5. 

"Looking  out  from  a  grove  we  have  trees 
as  vertical  straight  lines,  cutting  lines  hori- 
zontal or  nearly  so.  Leaving  small  forms  out 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION. 
From  Dow's  "Composition,'"  by  courtesy  of  The  Baker  &  Taylor 


of  account  we  have  in  these  main  lines  an 
arrangement  of  rectangular  spaces  much  like 
the  gingha'm  and  other  simple  patterns.  This 
then  is  one  kind  of  beauty  of  landscape." 
— Ibid.  (See  the  accompanying  picture.) 

"As  music  is  the  poetry  of  sound,  so  is 
painting  the  poetry  of  sight,  and  the  subject- 
matter  has  nothing  to  do  with  harmony  of 
sound  or  of  color.  .  .  .  Art  should  stand 
alone,  and  appeal  to  the  artistic  sense  of 
eye  or  ear,  without  confounding  this  with 
emotions  entirely  foreign  to  it,  as  devotion, 
pity,  love,  patriotism,  and  the  like." — J. 
M'Neill  Whistler,  "The  Gentle  Art  of  Mak- 
ing Enemies,'"  p.  127. 

"Without  entering  on  the  philosophy  of 


the  subject,  it  may  be  enough  for  us  hei3  to 
know  that  works  of  formative  art  do  give  us 
pleasure  of  a  disinterested  and  lasting  kind, 
and  this  for  two  reasons;  partly  because 
they  are  beautiful,  and,  partly  because  they 
are  significant. 

"This  association  of  significance  with 
beauty  as  elements  of  effect  in  the  arts  of 
form,  is  opposed  to  the  view  of  some  modern 
critics,  who  assert  that  a  work  of  art  should 
be  beautiful  and  nothing  more.  The  argu- 
ment on  which  they  chiefly  rely  to  support 
this  view  is  derived  from  the  art  of  music. 
As  music,  they  say,  delights  the  ear  by  a 
succession  of  lovely  sounds,  so  architecture, 
painting  and  sculpture  should  delight 
the  eye  by  lovely  color  and  forms. 
As  the  sounds  of  music  are  mere 
sounds  and  mean  nothing,  so  the 
colors  and  forms  in  question  should 
be  colors  and  forms  and  nothing 
more.  That  they  express  or  sym- 
bolize ideas,  or  represent  anything 
in  nature,  is  an  untoward  accident, 
to  be  as  far  as  possible  ignored.  A 
picture,  according  to  this  theory, 
should  be  as  much  as  possible  like  a 
Persian  carpet,  and  present  a  beau- 
tiful combination  of  colors  and  pleas- 
ing harmony  of  tone,  without  any 
complications  arising  from  'subject' 
or  truthfulness  to  nature,  while  archi- 
tecture and  sculpture  should  offer 
agreeable  combinations  of  lines  and 
masses  without  dabbling  in  symbol- 
ism or  idealization  of  the  human  form. 
"Fully  to  discuss  the  questions  thus  raised 
would  require  a  volume,  and  it  will  only  be 
possible  here  to  bring  forward  one  or  two 
reasons  for  retaining  the  term  'significance' 
side  by  side  with  that  of  'beauty'  in  the  con- 
nection just  indicated.  The  theory  under 
consideration  has  the  merit  of  being  delight- 
fully easy  and  logical,  but  it  is,  as  we  shall 
presently  see,  at  once  unscientific  and  prac- 
tically absurd.  The  fact  is  that  the  illustra- 
tion on  which  it  chiefly  relies,  that  of  music, 
does  not  bear  it  out.  As  Mr.  James  Sully 
has  sufficiently  shown,  the  musician's  notes 
are  not  mere  sounds,  but  derive  a  large  part 
of  their  power  over  us  from  the  fact  that 
they  recall,  in  a  far-off  way,  the  tones  of  the 


(  'O, 


82 


REPRESENTA  TIVE  JUDGMENTS 


human  voice  in  emotional  utterance,  and  so 
awake  in  us  associations  of  sentiment  none 
the  less  moving  because  they  are  of  a  latent 
and  subtle  order.  So  also  the  shapes  and 
tones  and  colors  presented  in  the  arts  of 
form  are  not  merely  visual  impressions,  but 
are  continually  appealing  to  similar  trains 
of  association  in  our  minds.  Around  every- 
thing in  nature  we  have  woven  associations 
of  pleasure  or  pain  or  interest,  so  that,  by 
the  mere  fact  of  our  living  in  the  midst  of 
them,  they  have  become  to  us  no  longer 
mere  things,  but  part  of  the  furniture  of 
our  intellectual  and  moral  life.  This  is  the 
case  with  those  persons  or  scenes  or  objects 
of  which  the  counterfeit  presentment  comes 
before  us  in  painting  and  in  sculpture,  but 
it  is  true  equally  of  almost  everything  that 
can  be  seen  or  suggested,  alike  in  nature 
and  in  art. 

"Speaking  broadly  there  are  three  aspects 
under  which  a  picture  may  be  regarded, 
(i)  It  may  be  regarded  merely  as  the  pre- 
sentation of  nature,  and  in  this  case  it 'may 
be  really  Nature,  not  Art,  with  which  the 
spectator  is  concerned.  (2)  It  may  be  re- 
garded merely  as  a  beautiful  thing  in  form 
and  color,  with  no  reference  at  all  to  the 
subject  of  the  representation.  (3)  Between 
these  two  opposing  views  there  comes  the 
third,  which,  ignoring  neither  the  subject 
of  the  work  nor  its  outward  appearance  as 
form  and  color,  regards  rather  the  artistic 
treatment  of  the  subject  which  has  won  from 
nature  the  secret  of  beauty. 

That  this  latter  view  embodies  the  sound- 
est appreciation  of  the  art  will  appear  more 
clearly  if  we  consider  for  a  moment  each  of 
the  two  more  narrow  and  limited  theories 
above  indicated." — G.  B.  Brown,  "The  Fine 
Arts,"  §§  p7,  707. 


T 


HE    LAWS    OF     PRINCIPALITY 
AND    REPETITION.  (2) 


Ruskin  has  made  a  statement  of  cer- 
tain principles  of  composition  which 
will  be  helpful  to  us.     He  indicates  at  the 
very  start  also  that  these  laws  are  universal. 
"It  follows,    from    these   general    truths, 
that  it  is  impossible  to  give  rules  which  will 


enable  you  to  compose.  You  might  much 
more  easily  receive  rules  to  enable  you  to  be 
witty.  If  it  were  possible  to  be  witty  by 
rule,  wit  would  cease  to  be  either  admirable 
or  amusing:  if  it  were  possible  to  compose 
melody  by  rule,  Mozart  and  Cimarosa  need 
not  have  been  born:  if  it  were  possible  to 
compose  pictures  by  rule,  Titian  and  Vero- 
nese would  be  ordinary  men  The  essence  of 
composition  lies  precisely  in  the  fact  of  its 
being  unteachable,  in  its  being  the  operation 
of  an  individual  mind  of  range  and  power 
exalted  above  others. 

"But  though  no  one  can  invent  by  rule, 
there  are  some  simple  laws  of  arrangement 
which  it  is  well  for  you  to  know,  because, 
though  they  will  not  enable  you  to  produce 
a  good  picture,  they  will  often  assist  you  to 
set  forth  what  goodness  may  be  in  your  work 
in  a  more  telling  way  than  you  could  have 
done  otherwise;  and  by  tracing  them  in  the 
work  of  good  composers,  you  may  better 
understand  the  grasp  of  their  imagination, 
and  the  power  it  possesses  over  their  mate- 
rials. I  shall  briefly  state  the  chief  of  these 
laws. 

"The  Law  of  Principality. —  The  great 
object  of  composition  being  always  to  secure 
unity;  that  is,  to  make  out  of  many  things 
one  whole ;  the  first  mode  in  which  this  can 
be  effected  is,  by  determining  that  one  fea- 
ture shall  be  more  important  than  all  the 
rest,  and  that  the  others  shall  group  with  it 
in  subordinate  positions. 


"This  is  the  simplest  law  of  ordinary 
ornamentation.  Thus  the  group  of  two 
leaves,  «,  is  unsatisfactory,  because  it  has  no 
leading  leaf;  but  that  at  b  is  prettier, 
because  it  has  a  head  or  master  leaf;  and  c 
more  satisfactory  still,  because  the  subordi- 
nation of  the  other  members  to  this  head 
leaf  is  made  more  manifest  by  their  gradual 
loss  of  size  as  they  fall  back  from  it.  Hence 
part  of  the  pleasure  we  have  in  the  Greek 
honeysuckle  ornament,  and  such  others. 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


"Thus,  also,  good  pictures  have  always 
one  light  larger  or  brighter  than  the  other 
lights,  or  one  figure  more  prominent  than 
the  other  figures,  or  one  mass  of  color  dom- 
inant over  all  the  othef  masses;  and  in  gen- 
eral you  will  find  it  much  benefit  your 
sketch  if  you  manage  that  there  shall  be  one 
light  on  the  cottage  wall,  or  one  blue  cloud  in 
the  sky,  which  may  attract  the  eye  as  leading 
light,  or  leading  gloom,  above  all  others. 
But  the  observance  of  the  rule  is  often  so 
cunningly  concealed  by  the  great  composers, 
that  its  force  is  hardly  at  first  traceable ;  and 
you  will  generally  find  they  are  vulgar  pic- 
tures in  which  the  law  is  strikingly  man- 
ifest. 

"As,  in  every  good  picture,  nearly  all 
laws  of  design  are  more  or  less  exemplified, 
it  will,  on  the  whole,  be  an  easier  way  of 
explaining  them  to  analyze  one  composition 
thoroughly,  than  to  give  instances  from  vari- 
ous works.  I  shall  therefore  take  one  of 
Turner's  simplest;  which  will  allow  us,  so 
to  speak,  easily  to  decompose  it,  and  illus- 
trate each  law  by  it  as  we  proceed. 


BRIDGE    OVER    THE   MOSELLE. 
A  composition  b\  J.  M.    W.    Turner. 


"Here  is  a  rude  sketch  of  the  arrangement 
of  the  whole  subject;  the  old  bridge  over 
the  Moselle  at  Coblentz,  the  town  of  Cob- 
lentz  on  the  right,  Ehrenbreitstein  on  the 
left.  The  leading  or  master  feature  is,  of 
course,  the  tower  on  the  bridge.  It  is  kept 
from  being  too  principal  by  an  important 
group  on  each  side  of  it;  the  boats,  on  the 
right,  and  Ehrenbreitstein  beyond.  The 
boats  are  large  in  mass,  and  more  forcible 


in  color,  but  they  are  broken  into  small 
divisions,  while  the  tower  is  simple,  and 
therefore  it  still  leads.  Ehrenbreitstein  is 
noble  in  its  mass,  but  so  reduced  by  aerial 
perspective  of  color  that  it  cannot  contend 
with  the  tower,  which  therefore  holds  the 
eye  and  becomes  the  key  of  the  picture. 
We  shall  see  presently  how  the  very  objects 
which  seem  at  first  to  contend  with  it  for  the 
mastery  are  made,  occultly,  to  increase  its 
preeminence. 

••The  Law  of  Repetition. — Another  impor- 
tant means  of  expressing  unity  is  to  mark 
some  kind  of  sympathy  among  the  different 
objects,  and  perhaps  the  pleasantest,  because 
most  surprising,  kind  of  sympathy,  is  when 
one  group  imitates  or  repeats  another;  not 
in  the  way  of  balance  or  symmetry,  but  sub- 
ordinately,  like  a  far-away  and  broken  echo 
of  it.  Prout  has  insisted  much  on  this  law 
in  all  his  writings  on  composition;  and  I 
think  it  is  even  more  authoritatively  present 
in  the  minds  of  most  great  composers  than 
the  law  of  principality.  ...  In  the  composi- 
tion I  have  chosen  for  our  illustration,  this 
reduplication  is  employed  to  a  singular 
extent.  The  tower,  or  leading  figure,  is 
first  repeated  by  the  low  echo  of  it  to 
the  left;  put  your  finger  over  this  lower 
tower,  and  see  how  the  picture  is  spoiled. 
Then  the  spires  of  Coblentz  are  all  arranged 
in  couples  (how  they  are  arranged  in  reality 
does  not  matter ;  when  we  are  composing  a 
great  picture,  we  must  play  the  towers 
about  till  they  come  right,  as  fearlessly  as 
if  they  were  chessmen  instead  of  cathedrals.) 
The  dual  arrangement  of  these  towers 
would  have  been  too  easily  seen,  were  it  not 
for  a  little  one  which  pretends  to  make  a 
triad  of  the  last  group  on  the  right,  but  is 
so  faint  as  to  be  hardly  discernible:  it  just 
takes  off  the  attention  from  the  artifice, 
helped  in  doing  so  by  the  mast  at  the  head 
of  the  boat,  which,  however,  has  instantly 
its  own  duplicate  put  at  the  stern.  Then 
there  is  the  large  boat  near,  and  its  echo 
beyond  it.  That  echo  is  divided  into  two 
again,  and  each  of  those  two  smaller  boats 
has  two  figures  in  it ;  while  two  figures  are 
also  sitting  together  on  the  great  rudder 
that  lies  half  in  the  water,  and  half  aground. 
Then,  finally,  the  great  mass  of  Ehrenbreit- 


84 


REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS 


MICHAEL.  MADONNA    ADORING    CHILD.  TOBIAS    AND    RAPHAEL. 

By  Pet-ugino.     A  triptych,  originally  an  altar  piece,  now  in  the  National  Gallery,  London. 


stein,  which  appears  at  first  to  have  no 
answering-  form,  has  almost  its  facsimile  in 
the  bank  on  which  the  girl  is  sitting,  this 
bank  is  as  absolutely  essential  to  the  com- 
pletion of  the  picture  as  any  object  in  the 
whole  series.  All  this  is  done  to  deepen  the 
effect  of  repose. 

"Symmetry  or  the  balance  of  parts  or 
masses  in  nearly  equal  opposition,  is  one  of 
the  conditions  of  treatment  under  the  law  of 
Repetition.  For  the  opposition,  in  a  sym- 
metrical object,  is  of  like  things  reflecting 
each  other;  it  is  not  the  balance  of  contrary 
natures  (like  that  of  day  and  night)  but  of 
like  natures  or  like  forms;  one  side  of  a 
leaf  being  set  like  the  reflection  of  the  other 
in  water. 

"Symmetry  in  Nature  is,  however,  never 
formal  nor  accurate.  She  takes  the  greatest 
care  to  secure  some  difference  between  the 
corresponding  things  or  parts  of  things ;  and 
an  approximation  to  accurate  symmetry  is 
only  permitted  in  animals  because  their 
motions  secure  perpetual  difference  between 
the  balancing-  parts.  Stand  before  a  mirror 
hold  your  arms  in  precisely  the  same  posi- 
tion at  each  side,  your  head  upright,  your 
body  straight,  divide  your  hair  exactly  in 


the  middle,  and  get  it  as  nearly  as  you  can 
into  exactly  the  same  shape  over  each  ear, 
and  you  will  see  the  effect  of  accurate  sym- 
metry you  will  see,  no  less,  how  all  grace 
and  power  in  the  human  form  result  from 
the  interference  of  motion  and  life  with 
symmetry,  and  from  the  reconciliation  of  its 
balance  with  its  changefulness.  Your  posi- 
tion, as  seen  in  the  mirror,  is  the  highest 
type  of  symmetry  as  understood  by  modern 
architects. 

"In  many  sacred  compositions,  living- 
symmetry,  the  balance  of  harmonious  oppo- 
sites,  is  one  of  the  profoundest  sources  of 
their  power :  almost  any  works  of  the  early 
painters,  Angelico,  Perugino,  Giotto,  etc., 
will  furnish  you  with  notable  instances  of  it. 
The  Madonna  of  Perugino  in  the  National 
Gallery,  with  the  angel  Michael  on  one  side 
and  Raphael  on  the  other,  is  as  beautiful  an 
example  as  you  can  have. 

"In  landscape,  the  principle  of  balance  is 
more  or  less  carried  out,  in  proportion  to 
the  wish  of  the  painter  to  express  disciplined 
calmness.  In  bad  compositions,  as  in  bad 
architecture,  it  is  formal,  a  tree  on  one  side 
answering  a  tree  on  the  other ;  but  in  good 
compositions,  as  in  graceful  statues,  it  is 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


always  easy,  and  sometimes  hardly  tracea- 
ble. In  the  Coblentz,  however,  you  cannot 
have  much  difficulty  in  seeing  how  the  boats 
on  one  side  of  the  tower  and  the  figures  on 
the  other  are  set  in  nearly  equal  balance;  the 
tower,  as  a  central  mass  uniting  both." — 
John  Ruskin,  "T/ie  Elements  of  Drawing," 
Letter  Three. 


T 


HE  LAWS  OF 
CURVATURE, 
TION.(3) 


CONTINUITY, 
AND      RADIA- 


"The  Law  of  Continuity. — Another 
important  and  pleasurable  way  of  expressing 
unity  is  by  giving  some  orderly  succession 
to  a  number  of  objects  more  or  less 
similar.     And  this  succession  is  most 
interesting  when  it  is  connected  with 
some  gradual  change  in  the  aspect 
or  character  of  the  objects.    Thus  the 
succession  of  the  pillars  of  a  cathe- 
dral aisle  is  most  interesting  when 
they  retire  in  perspective,  becoming 
more  and  more  obscure  in  the  dis- 
tance; so  the  succession  of  mountain 
promontories  one  behind  another,  on 
the  flanks  of  a  valley ;  so  the  succes- 
sion of   clouds,    fading    farther  and 
farther  towards    the   horizon;    each 
promontory    and    each   cloud   being 
of  different    shape,    yet    all    evidently   fol- 
lowing in  a  calm  and  appointed  order.     If 
there  be  no  change  at  all  in  the  shape  or 
size    of    the     objects,    there     is     no    con- 
tinuity ;  there  is  only  repetition — monotony. 


It  is  the  change  in  shape  which  suggests 
the  idea  of  their  being  individually  free, 
and  able  to  escape,  if  they  liked,  from  the 
law  that  rules  them,  and  yet  submitting  to 
it.  I  will  leave  our  chosen  illustrative  com- 
position for  a  moment  to  take  up  another, 
still  more  expressive  of  this  law.  It  is  one 
of  Turner's  most  tender  studies,  a  sketch  on 
Calais  Sands  at  sunset;  so  delicate  in  the 
expression  of  wave  and  cloud,  that  it  is  of 
no  use  for  me  to  try  to  reach  it  with  any 
kind  of  outline  in  a  woodcut;  but  the  neigh- 
boring rough  sketch  is  enough  to  give  an 
idea  of  its  arrangement.  The  aim  of  the 
painter  has  been  to  give  the  intensest  ex- 
pression of  repose,  together  with  the  en- 
chanted lulling,  monotonous  motion  of  cloud 


CALAIS    SANDS    AT    SUNSET. 
A  study  by  J.  M,   W.  Turner. 


COMPOSITION,    WITH    LINES    OF    CURVATURE    INDICATED. 

and  wave.  All  the  clouds  are  moving  in 
innumerable  ranks  after  the  sun,  meeting 
towards  the  point  in  the  horizon  where  he 
has  set ;  and  the  tidal  waves  gain  in  winding 
currents  upon  the  sand,  with  that  stealthy 
haste  in  which  they  cross  each  other  so 
quietly,  at  their  edges:  just  folding  one 
over  another  as  they  meet,  like  a  little  piece 
of  ruffled  silk,  and  leaping  up  a  little  as  two 
children  kiss  and  clap  their  hands,  and  then 
going  on  again,  each  in  its  silent  hurry, 
drawing  pointed  arches  on  the  sand  as  their 
thin  edges  intersect  in  parting;  but  all  this 
would  not  have  been  enough  expressed  with- 
out the  line  of  the  old  pier-timbers,  black 
with  weeds,  strained  and  bent  by  the  storm 
waves,  and  now  seeming  to  stoop  in  follow- 
ing one  another,  like  dark  ghosts  escaping 
slowly  from  the  cruelty  of  the  pursuing 
sea. 


86 


REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS 


"Well,  to  return  to  our  continuity.  We 
see  that  the  Turnerian  bridge  is  of  the  abso- 
lutely perfect  type,  and  is  still  farther  inter- 
esting- by  having  its  main  arch  crowned  by 
a  watch-tower.  But  as  I  want  you  to  note 
especially  what  perhaps  was  not  the  case  in 
the  real  bridge,  but  is  entirely  Turner's 
doing,  you  will  find  that  though  the  arches 
diminish  gradually,  not  one  is  regularly 
diminished — they  are  all  of  different  shapes 
and  sizes :  you  cannot  see  this  clearly  on  p. 
83,  but  in  the  larger  diagram,  p.  85,  you  will 
with  ease.  This  is  indeed  also  part  of  the 
ideal  of  a  bridge,  because  the  lateral  currents 
near  the  shore  are  of  course  irregular  in 
size,  and  a  simple  builder  would  naturally 
vary  his  arches  accordingly ;  and  also,  if  the 
bottom  was  rocky,  build  his  piers  where  the 
rocks  came.  But  it  is  not  as  a  part  of  bridge 
ideal,  but  as  a  necessity  of  all  noble  compo- 
sition, that  this  irregularity  is  introduced  by 
Turner.  It  at  once  raises  the  object  thus 
treated  from  the  lower  or  vulgar  unity  of 
rigid  law  to  the  greater  unity  of  clouds, 
and  waves,  and  trees,  and  human  souls  each 
different,  each  obedient,  and  each  in  har- 
monious service. 

"The  Law  of  Curvature. — There  is,  how- 
ever, another  point  to  be  noticed  in  this 
bridge  of  Turner's.  Not  only  does  it  slope 
away  unequally  at  its  sides,  but  it  slopes  in 
a  gradual  though  very  subtle  curve.  And 
if  you  substitute  a  straight  line  for  this 
curve  (drawing  one  with  a  rule  from  the 
base  of  the  tower  on  each  side  to  the  ends 
of  the  bridge,  and  effacing  the  curve),  you 
will  instantly  see  that  the  design  has  suffered 
grievously.  You  may  ascertain,  by  experi- 
ment, that  all  beautiful  objects  whatsoever 
are  thus  terminated  by  delicately  curved 
lines,  except  where  the  straight  line  is  indis- 
pensable to  their  use  or  stability:  and  that 
when  a  complete  system  of  straight  lines, 
throughout  the  form,  is  necessary  to  that 
stability,  as  in  crystals,  the  beauty,  if  any 
exists,  is  in  color  and  transparency,  not  in 
form.  Cut  out  the  shape  of  any  crystal  you 
like,  in  white  wax  or  wood,  and  put  it  beside 
a  white  lily,  and  you  will  feel  the  force  of 
the  curvature  in  its  purity,  irrespective  of 
added  color,  or  other  interfering  elements 
of  beauty. 


"Well,  as  curves  are  more  beautiful  than 
straight  lines,  it  is  necessary  to  a  good  com- 
position that  its  continuities  of  object,  mass, 
or  color  should  be,  if  possible,  in  curves, 
rather  than  straight  lines  or  angular  ones. 
Perhaps  one  of  the  simplest  and  prettiest 
examples  of  a  graceful  continuity  of  this 
kind  is  in  the  line  traced  at  any  moment  by 
the  corks  of  a  net  as  it  is  being  drawn : 
nearly  every  person  is  more  or  less  attracted 
by  the  beauty  of  the  dotted  line.  Now  it  is 
almost  always  possible,  not  only  to  secure 
such  a  continuity  in  the  arrangement  or 
boundaries  of  objects  which,  like  these 
bridge  arches  or  the  corks  of  the  net,  are 
actually  connected  with  each  other,  but — 
and  this  is  a  still  more  noble  and  interesting 
kind  of  continuity — among  features  which 
appear  at  first  entirely  separate.  Thus  the 
towers  of  Ehrenbreitstein,  on  the  left, 
appear  at  first  independent  of  each  other; 
but  when  I  give  their  profile  on  a  larger 
scale,  the  reader  may  easily  perceive  that 
there  is  a  subtle  cadence  and  harmony 
among  them.  The  reason  of  this  is,  that 
they  are  all  bounded  by  one  grand  curve, 
traced  by  the  dotted  line;  out  of  the  seven 
towers,  four  precisely  touch  this  curve,  the 
others  only  falling  back  from  it  here  and 
there  to  keep  the  eye  from  discovering  it 
too  easily. 

"And  it  is  not  only  always  possible  to 
obtain  continuities  of  this  kind:  it  is,  in 
drawing  large  forest  or  mountain  forms 
essential  to  truth.  The  towers  of  Ehren- 
breitstein might  or  might  not  in  reality  fall 
into  such  a  curve,  but  assuredly  the  basalt 


TOWERS    OF    EHRENBREITSTEIN. 


te     D 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


89 


rock  on  which  they  stand  did;  for  all  moun- 
tain forms  not  cloven  into  absolute  preci- 
pice, nor  covered  by  straight  slopes  of 
shales,  are  more  or  less  governed  by  these 
great  curves,  it  being  one  of  the  aims  of 
Nature  in  all  her  work  to  produce  them. 
The  reader  must  already  know  this,  if  he 
has  been  able  to  sketch  at  all  among  the 
mountains,  if  not,  let  him  merely  draw  for 
himself,  carefully,  the  outlines  of  any  low 
hills  accessible"  to  him,  where  they  are  toler- 
ably steep,  or  of  the  woods  which  grow  on 
them.  .  .  .  Graceful  curvature  is  distin- 
guished from  ungraceful  by  two  characters: 
first,  its  moderation,  that  is  to  say,  its  close 
approach  to  straightness  in  some  part  of  its 
course;  and,  secondly,  by  its  variation,  that 
is  to  say,  its  never  remaining  equal  in 
degree  at  different  parts  of  its  course. 

"This  variation  is  itself  twofold  in  all 
good  curves. 

"There  is,  first,  a  steady  change  through 
the  whole  line  from  less  to  more  curvature, 
or  more  to  less,  so  that  no  part  of  the 


TYPES    OF    CURVED    LINES. 


line  is  a  segment  of  a  circle,  or  can  be 
drawn  by  compasses  in  any  way  whatever. 
Thus,  a  is  a  bad  curve,  because  it  is  part 
of  a  circle,  and  is  therefore  monotonous 
throughout ;  but  b  is  a  good  curve,  because 
it  continually  changes  its  direction  as  it  pro- 
ceeds. 

"Not  only  does  every  good  curve  vary  in 
general  tendency,  but  it  is  modulated,  as 
it  proceeds,  by  myriads  of  subordinate 
curves. 

"The  Law  of  Radiation.— We  have  hith- 
erto been  concerned  only  with  the  binding 
of  our  various  objects  into  .beautiful  lines  or 
processions.  The  next  point  we  have  to 
consider  is,  how  we  may  unite  these  lines 
or  processions  themselves,  so  as  to  make 
groups  of  them.  Now,  there  are  two  kinds 
of  harmonies  of  lines.  One  in  which,  mov- 
ing more  or  less  side  by  side,  they  variously, 


but  evidently  with  consent,  retire  from  or 
approach  each  other,  intersect  or  oppose 
each  other:  currents  of  melody  in  music,  for 
different  voices,  thus  approach  and  cross, 
fall  and  rise,  in  harmony;  so  the  waves  of 
the  sea,  as  they  approach  the  shore,  flow 
into  one  another  or  cross,  but  with  a  great 
unity  through  all,  and  so  various  lines  of 
composition  often  flow  harmoniously  through 
and  across  each  other  in  a  picture.  But  the 
most  simple  and  perfect  connection  of  lines 
is  by  radiation;  that  is,  by  their  all  spring- 
ing from  one  point,  or  closing  towards  it: 
and  this  harmony  is  often,  in  Nature  almost 
always,  united  with  the  other;  as  the 
boughs  of  trees,  though  they  intersect  and 
play  amongst  each  other  irregularly,  indi- 
cate by  their  general  tendency  their  origin 
from  one  root.  An  essential  part  of  the 
beauty  of  all  vegetable  form  is  in  this  radia- 
tion: it  is  seen  most  simply  in  a  single 
flower  or  leaf,  as  in  a  convolvulus  bell,  or 
chestnut  leaf;  but  more  beautifully  in  the 
complicated  arrangements  of  the  large 
boughs  and  sprays.  For  a  leaf  is  only  a 
flat  piece  of  radiation ;  but  the  tree  throws 
its  branches  on  all  sides,  and  even  in 
every  profile  view  of  it,  which  presents  a 
radiation  more  or  less  correspondent  to 
that  of  its  leaves,  it  is  more  beautiful,  be- 
cause varied  by  the  freedom  of  the  separate 
branches. 

"This  law  of  radiation,  then,  enforcing 
unison  of  action  in  arising  from,  or  proceed- 
ing to,  some  given  point,  is  perhaps,  of  all 
principles  of  composition,  the  most  influen- 
tial in  producing  the  beauty  of  groups  of 
form.  Other  laws  make  them  forcible  or 
interesting,  but  this  generally  is  chief  in 
rendering  them  beautiful.  In  the  arrange- 
ment of  masses  of  pictures,  it  is  constantly 
obeyed  by  the  great  composers;  but,  like 
the  law  of  principality,  with  careful  conceal- 
ment of  its  imperativeness,  the  point  to 
which  the  lines  of  main  curvature  are 
directed  being  very  often  far  away  out  of 
the  picture.  Sometimes,  however,  a  system 
of  curves  will  be  employed  definitely  to 
exalt,  by  their  concurrence,  the  value  of 
some  leading  object,  and  then  the  law  be- 
comes traceable  enough." — Jo/in  Ruskin, 
"Elements  of  Drawing,"  Letter  Three. 


9o 


T 


HE  LAWS  OF  CONTRAST,  CON- 
SISTENCY,   AND    HARMONY.  (4) 


"The  Law  of  Contrast. — Of  course 
the  character  of  everything  is  best 
manifested  by  Contrast.  Rest  can  only  be 
enjoyed  after  labor;  sound,  to  be  heard 
clearly,  must  rise  out  of  silence;  light  is 
exhibited  by  darkness,  darkness  by  light; 
and  so  on  in  all  things.  Now  in  art  every 
color  has  an  opponent  color,  which,  if 
brought  near  it,  will  relieve  it  more  com- 
pletely than  any  other;  so,  also,  every  form 
and  line  may  be  made  more  striking  to  the 
eye  by  an  opponent  form  or  line  near  them ; 
a  curved  line  is  set  off  by  a  straight  one,  a 
massy  form  by  a  slight  one,  and  so  on;  and 
in  all  good  work  nearly  double  the  value, 
which  any  given  color  or  form  would 
have  uncombined,  is  given  to  each  by  con- 
trast. 

"In  this  case  again,  however,  a  too  mani- 
fest use  of  the  artifice  vulgarizes  a  picture. 
Great  painters  do  not  commonly,  or  very 
visibly,  admit  violent  contrast.  They  intro- 
duce it  by  stealth  and  with  intermediate 
links  of  tender  change;  allowing,  indeed, 
the  opposition  to  tell  upon  the  mind  as  a 
surprise,  but  not  as  a  shock. 

"Thus  in  the  rock  of  Ehrenbreitstein,  p. 
86,  the  main  current  of  the  lines  being 
downwards,  in  a  convex  swell,  they  are  sud- 
denly stopped  at  the  lowest  tower  by  a 
counter  series  of  beds,  directed  nearly 
straight  across  them.  This  adverse  force 
sets  off  and  relieves  the  great  curvature,  but 
it  is  reconciled  to  it  by  a  series  of  radiating 
lines  below,  which  at  first  sympathize  with 
the  oblique  bar,  then  gradually  get  steeper, 
till  they  meet  and  join  in  the  fall  of  the 
great  curve.  No  passage,  however  inten- 
tionally monotonous,  is  ever  introduced  by 
a  good  artist  without  some  slight  counter 
current  of  this  kind;  so  much,  indeed,  do 
the  great  composers  feel  the  necessity  of  it, 
that  they  will  even  do  things  purposely  ill 
or  unsatisfactorily,  in  order  to  give  greater 
value  to  their  well-doing  in  other  places. 
In  a  skillful  poet's  versification  the  so-called 
bad  or  inferior  lines  are  not  inferior  because 
he  could  not  do  them  better,  but  because 
he  feels  that  if  all  were  equally  weighty, 


there  would  be  no  real  sense  of  weight  any- 
where; if  all  were  equally  melodious,  the 
melody  itself  would  be  fatiguing;  and  he 
purposely  introduces  the  laboring  or  dis- 
cordant verse,  that  the  full  ring  may  be  felt 
in  his  main  sentence,  and  the  finished  sweet- 
ness in  his  chosen  rhythm.  And  continually 
in  painting,  inferior  artists  destroy  their 
work  by  giving  too  much  of  all  that  they 
think  is  good,  while  the  great  painter  gives 
just  enough  to  be  enjoyed,  and  passes  to  an 
opposite  kind  of  enjoyment,  or  to  an  inferior 
state  of  enjoyment:  he  gives  a  passage  of 
rich,  involved,  exquisitely  wrought  color, 
then  passes  away  into  slight,  and  pale,  and 
simple  color;  he  paints  for  a  minute  or 
two  with  intense  decision,  then  suddenly 
becomes,  as  the  spectator  thinks,  slovenly; 
but  he  is  not  slovenly:  you  could  not  have 
taken  any  more  decision  from  him  just  then; 
you  have  had  as  much  as  is  good  for  you; 
he  paints  over  a  great  space  of  his  picture 
forms  of  the  most  rounded  and  melting  ten- 
derness, and  suddenly,  as  you  think  by  a 
freak,  gives  you  a  bit  as  jagged  and  sharp 
as  a  leafless  blackthorn. 

"Perhaps  the  most  exquisite  piece  of  subtle 
contrast  in  the  world  of  painting  is  the 
arrow  point,  laid  sharp  against  the  white  side 
and  among  the  flowing  hair  of  Correggio's 
Antiope.  It  is  quite  singular  how  very 


SMALL    TOWER. 

little  contrast  will  sometimes  serve  to  make 
an  entire  group  of  forms  interesting  which 
would  otherwise  have  been  valueless. 

"There  is  a  good  deal  of  picturesque 
material,  for  instance,  in  this  top  of  an  old 
tower,  tiles  and  stones  and  sloping  roof 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


not  disagreeably  mingled;  but  all  would 
have  been  imsatisfactory  if  there  had 
not  happened  to  be  that  iron  ring  on  the 
inner  wall,  which  by  its  vigorous  black 
circular  line  precisely  opposes  all  the  square 
and  angular  characters  of  the  battlements 
and  roof.  Draw  the  tower  without  the  ring, 
and  see  what  a  difference  it  will  make. 

"There  are  in  this  figure  several  other 
simple  illustrations  of  the  laws  we  have  been 
tracing.  Thus  the  whole  shape  of  the  wall's 
mass  being  square,  it  is  well,  still  for  the 
sake  of  contrast,  to  oppose  it  not  only  by  the 
element  of  curvature,  in  the  ring,  and  lines 
of  the  roof  below,  but  by  that  of  sharpness; 
hence  the  pleasure  which  the  eye  takes  in 
the  projecting  point  of  the  roof.  Also  be- 
cause the  walls  are  thick  and  sturdy,  it  is 
well  to  contrast  their  strength  with  weak- 
ness; therefore  we  enjoy  the  evident  decrep- 
itude of  this  roof  as  it  sinks  between  them.  ' 
The  whole  mass  being  nearly  white,  we 
want  a  contrasting  shadow  somewhere;  and 
get  it,  under  our  piece  of  decrepitude. 
This  shade,  with  the  tiles  of  the  wall  below, 
forms  another  pointed  mass,  necessary  to 
the  first  by  the  law  of  repetition.  Hide  this 
inferior  angle  with  your  finger,  and  see  how 
ugly  the  other  looks.  A  sense  of  the  law  of 
symmetry,  though  you  might  hardly  sap- 
pose  it,  has  some  share  in  the  feeling  with 
which  you  look  at  the  battlements;  there  is 
a  certain  pleasure  in  the  opposed  slopes  of 
their  top,  on  one  side  down  to  the  left,  on 
the  other  to  the  right.  Still  less  would  you 
think  the  law  of  radiation  had  anything  to 
do  with  the  matter:  but  if  you  take  the 
extreme  point  of  the  black  shadow  on  the 
left  for  a  center,  and  follow  first  the  low 
curve  of  the  eaves  of  the  wall,  it  will  lead 
you,  if  you  continue  it,  to  the  point  of  the 
tower  cornice;  follow  the  second  curve,  the 
top  of  the  tiles  of  the  wall,  and  it  will  strike 
the  top  of  the  right-hand  battlement;  then 
draw  a  curve  from  the  highest  point  of  the 
angle  battlement  on  the  left,  through  the 
points  of  the  roof  and  its  dark  echo;  and  you 
will  see  how  the  whole  top  of  the  tower 
radiates  from  this  lowest  dark  point.  There 
are  other  curvatures  crossing  these  main 
ones,  to  keep  them  from  being  too  conspicu- 
ous. Follow  the  curve  of  the  upper  roof,  it 


•  will  take  you  to  the  top  of  the  highest  bat- 
tlement; and  the  stones  indicated  at  the 
right-hand  side  of  the  tower  are  more 
extended  at  the  bottom,  in  order  to  get  some 
less  direct  expression  of  sympathy,  such  as 
irregular  stones  may  be  capable  of,  with  the 
general  flow  of  the  curves  from  left  to  right. 

"You  may  not  readily  believe,  at  first, 
that  all  these  laws  are  indeed  involved  in  so 
trifling  a  piece  of  composition.  But  as  you 
study  longer,  you  will  discover  that  these 
laws,  and  many  more,  are  obeyed  by  the 
powerful  composers  in  every  toucJi:  that  lit- 
erally, there  is  never  a  dash  of  their  pencil 
which  is  not  carrying  out  appointed  pur- 
poses of  this  kind  in  twenty  various  ways  at 
once;  and  that  there  is  as  much  difference, 
in  way  of  intention  and  authority,  between 
one  of  the  great  composers  ruling  his  col- 
ors, and  a  common  painter  confused  by' 
them,  as  there  is  between  a  general  directing 
the  march  of  an  army,  and  an  old  lady  car- 
.ried  off  her  feet  by  a  mob. 

"The  Law  of  Consistency. — It  is  to  be 
remembered,  in  the  next  place,  that  while 
contrast  exhibits  the  characters  of  things,  it' 
very  often  neutralizes  or  paralyzes  their 
power.  A  number  of  white  things  may  be: 
shown  to  be  clearly  white  by  opposition  of  a 
black  thing,  but  if  we  want  the  full  power  of 
their  gathered  light,  the  black  thing  may  be 
seriously  in  our  way.  Thus,  while  contrast 
displays  things,  it  is  unity  and  sympathy 
which  employ  them,  concentrating  the 
power  of  several  into  a  mass.  And,  not  in 
art  merely,  but  in  all  the  affairs  of  life,  the 
wisdom  of  man  is  continually  called  upon  to' 
reconcile  these  opposite  methods  of  exhibit- 
ing, or  using,  the  materials  in  his  power. 
By  change  he  gives  them  pleasantness,  and 
by  consistency  value ;  by  change  he  is 
refreshed,  and  by  perseverance  strength- 
ened. 

"Hence  many  compositions  address  them- 
selves to  the  spectator  by  aggregate  force  of 
color  or  line,  more  than  by  contrasts  of 
either;  many  noble  pictures  are  painted 
almost  exclusively  in  various  tones  of  red, 
or  gray,  or  gold,  so  as  to  be  instantly 
striking  by  their  breadth,  flush  or  glow, 
or  tender  coldness,  these  qualities  being 
exhibited  only  by  slight  and  subtle  use 


92 


REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS 


of  contrast.  Similarly  as  to  form;  some 
compositions  associate  massive  and  rug- 
ged forms,  others  slight  and  graceful  ones, 
each  with  few  interruptions  by  lines  of 
contrary  character.  And,  in  general,  such 
compositions  possess  higher  sublimity  than 
those  which  are  more  mingled  in  their  ele- 
ments. They  tell  a  special  tale,  and  sum- 
mon a  definite  state  of  feeling,  while  the 
grand  compositions  merely  please  the  eye. 


THE   TORRENT. 
By  Ruysdael,  in  Amsterdam.     An  example  of  consistency. 


"This  unity  or  breadth  of  character  gen- 
erally attaches  most  to  the  works  of  the 
greatest  men;  their  separate  pictures  have 
all  separate  aims.  We  have  not,  in  each, 
gray  color  set  against  somber,  and  sharp 
forms  against  soft,  and  loud  passages  against 
low:  but  we  have  the  bright  picture,  with 
its  delicate  sadness;  the  somber  picture, 
with  its  single  ray  of  relief;  the  stern  pic- 
ture, with  only  one  tender  group  of  lines; 


the  soft  and  calm  picture,   with   only   one 
rock  angle  at  its  flank;  and  soon.      Hence 
the    variety   of   their   work,    as    well  as  its 
impressiveness.      The  principal  bearing    of 
this  law,  however,  is  on  the  separate  masses 
or  divisions  of  a  picture:    the   character  of 
the   whole  composition  may    be    broken  or 
various,   if  we  please,  but  there   must  cer- 
tainly be  a  tendency  to  consistent  assemblage 
in  its  divisions.     As  an  army  may  act  on  sev- 
eral points  at  once,  but 
can  only  act  effectively 
by    having    somewhere 
formed    and  regular 
masses,  and  not  wholly 
by    skirmishers;     so    a 
picture  may  be  various 
in    its    tendencies,  but 
must    be    somewhere 
united  and  coherent  in 
its  masses.      Good  com- 
posers are  always  asso- 
ciating   their   colors   in 
great   groups;    binding 
their  forms  together  by 
encompassing  lines,  and 
securing,      by     various 
dexterities  of  expedient, 
what    they   themselves 
call  "breadth":  that  is 
to  say,  a  large  gather- 
ing   of    each    kind    of 
thing    into  one    place; 
light  being  gathered  to 
light,  darkness  to  dark- 
ness, and  color  to  color. 
If,     however,    this    be 
done    by    introducing 
false  lights  or  false  col- 
ors,   it    is    absurd   and 
monstrous;  the  skill  of 
a    painter    consists     in 

obtaining  breadth  by  rational  arrangement  of 
his  objects,  not  by  forced  or  wanton  treatment 
of  them.  It  is  an  easy  matter  to  paint  one 
thing  all  white,  and  another  all  black  or  brown  ; 
but  not  an  easy  matter  to  assemble  all  the 
circumstances  which  will  naturally  produce 
white  in  one  place,  and  brown  in  another. 
Generally  speaking,  however,  breadth  will 
result  in  sufficient  degree  from  fidelity  of 
study:  Nature  is  always  broad;  and  if  you 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


93 


paint  her  colors  in  true  relations,  you  will 
paint  them  in  majestic  masses.  If  you  find 
your  work  look  broken  and  scattered,  it  is, 
in  all  probability,  not  only  ill  composed,  but 
untrue. 

"The  opposite  quality  to  breadth,  that  of 
division  or  scattering  of  light  and  color, 
has  a  certain  contrasting  charm,  and  is  occa- 
sionally introduced  with  exquisite  effect  by 
good  composers.  Still,  it  is  never  the  mere 
scattering,  but  the  order  discernible  through 
this  scattering,  which  is  the  real  source  of 
pleasure;  not  the  mere  multitude,  but  the 
constellation  of  multitude.  The  broken 
lights  in  the  work  of  a  good  painter  wander 
like  flocks  upon  the  hills,  not  unshepherded ; 
speaking  of  life  and  peace :  the  broken  lights 
of  a  bad  painter  fall  like  hailstones,  and  are 
capable  only  of  mischief,  leaving  it  to  be 
wished  they  were  also  of  dissolution. 

"The  Law  of  Harmony. — This  last  law  is 
not,  strictly  speaking,  so  much  one  of  com- 
position as  of  truth,  but  it  must  guide  com- 
position, and  is  properly,  therefore,  to  be 
stated  in  this  place. 

"Good  drawing  is,  as  we  have  seen,  an 
abstract  of  natural  facts ;  you  cannot  repre- 
sent all  that  you  would,  but  must  continu- 
ally be  falling  short,  whether  you  will  or  no, 
of  the  force,  or  quantity,  of  Nature.  Now, 
suppose  that  your  means  and  time  do  not 
admit  of  your  giving  the  depth  of  color  in 
the  scene,  and  that  you  are  obliged  to  paint 
it  paler.  If  you  paint  all  the  colors  pro- 
portionately paler,  as  if  an  equal  quantity  of 
tint  had  been  washed  away  from  each  of 
them,  you  still  obtain  a  harmonious,  though 
not  an  equally  forcible  statement  of  natural 
fact.  But  if  you  take  away  the  colors  une- 
qually, and  leave  some  tints  nearly  as  deep 
as  they  are  in  Nature,  while  others  are  much 
subdued,  you  have  no  longer  a  true  state- 
ment. You  cannot  say  to  the  observer, 
'Fancy  all  those  colors  a  little  deeper,  and 
you  will  have  the  actual  fact. '  However  he 
adds  in  imagination,  or  takes  away,  some- 
thing is  sure  to  be  still  wrong.  The  picture 
is  out  of  harmony. 

"This  harmony  of  tone,  as  it  is  generally 
called,  is  the  most  important  of  those  which 
the  artist  has  to  regard.  But  there  are  all 
kinds  of  harmonies  in  a  picture,  according 


to  its  mode  of  production.  There  is  even  a 
harmony  of  touch. 

"I  have  now  stated  to  you  all  the  laws  of 
composition  which  occur  to  me  as  capable  of 
being  illustrated  or  defined;  but  there  are 
multitudes  of  others  which,  in  the  present 
state  of  my  knowledge,  I  cannot  define,  and 
others  which  I  never  hope  to  define;  and 
these  the  most  important,  and  connected 
with  the  deepest  powers  of  the  art.  Among 
those  which  I  hope  to  be  able  to  explain 
when  I  have  thought  of  them  more,  are  the 
laws  which  relate  to  nobleness  and  ignoble- 
ness;  that  ignobleness  especially  which  we 
commonly  call  'vulgarity,'  and  which,  in  its 
essence,  is  one  of  the  most  curious  subjects 
of  inquiry  connected  with  human  feelingj 
Among  those  which  I  never  hope  to  explain, 
are  chiefly  laws  of  expression,  and  others 
bearing  simply  on  simple  matters;  but,  for 
that  very  reason,  more  influential  than  any 
others.  These  are,  from  the  first,  as  inex- 
plicable as  our  bodily  sensations  are;  it 
being  just  as  impossible,  I  think,  to  explain 
why  one  succession  of  musical  notes  shall  be 
noble  and  pathetic,  and  such  as  might  have 
been  sung  by  Casella  to  Dante,  and  why 
another  succession  is  base  and  ridiculous, 
and  would  be  fit  only  for  the  reasonably 
good  ear  of  Bottom,  as  to  explain  why  we 
like  sweetness,  and  dislike  bitterness.  The 
best  part  of  every  great  work  is  always 
inexplicable :  it  is  good  because  it  is  good ; 
and  innocently  gracious,  opening  as  the 
green  of  the  earth,  or  falling  as  the  dew  of 
heaven. 

"But  though  you  cannot  explain  them, 
you  may  always  render  yourself  more  and 
more  sensitive  to  these  higher  qualities  by 
the  discipline  which  you  generally  give  to 
your  character,  and  this  especially  with 
regard  to  the  choice  of  incidents;  a  kind  of 
composition  in  some  sort  easier  than  the 
artistical  arrangement  of  lines  and  colors, 
but  in  every  sort  nobler,  because  addressed 
to  deeper  feelings. 

"All  noble  composition  of  this  kind  can  be 
reached  only  by  instinct:  you  cannot  set 
yourself  to  arrange  such  a  subject;  you  may 
see  it,  and  seize  it,  at  all  times,  but  never 
laboriously  invent  it.  And  your  power  of 
discerning  what  is  best  in  expression,  among 


94 


REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS 


natural  subjects,  depends  wholly  on  the 
temper  in  which  you  keep  your  own  mind; 
above  all,  on  your  living  so  much  alone  as 
to  allow  it  to  become  acutely  sensitive  in  its 
own  stillness.  The  noisy  life  of  modern  days 
is  wholly  incompatible  with  any  true  percep- 
tion of  natural  beauty. " — John  Ruskin," Ele- 
ments of  Draining, ' '  Third  Letter. 

In  Ruskin's  statement  he  has  spoken  of 
principles  of  beauty  rather  than  of  repre- 
sentation. The  same  laws  apply  to  the  curve 
of  a  vase,  and  the  cut  of  a  gown.  If  our 
reading  of  these  passages  is  profitable,  we 
shall  find  ourselves  looking  at  lines  in  pic- 
tures and  in  nature  in  quite  a  new  way.  We 
shall  find  analogies  in  music  and  in  the 
dance. 


T 


WO  OTHER  AUTHORITIES  ON 
LAWS  OF  COMPOSITION.  (5) 


In  contrast  with  Mr.  Ruskin's  elab- 
oration, Prof.  G.  B.  Brown,  a  living 
authority  on  art,  posits  only  three  formal 
conditions  of  beauty  in  composition,  the 
nature  of  which  will  appear  from  the  follow- 
ing selections: 

«•  The  formal  conditions  of  beauty  in  com- 
position  may  be  reduced  to  three — Clearness 
of  arrangement,  Repetition  or  Regularity, 
and  Contrast  or  Variety.  There  must  be 
clearness  of  arrangement  that  the  eye  may 
be  able  to  find  its  way  among  the  elements 
of  the  composition ;  enough  similarity  among 
these  for  the  eye  to  be  able  to  rest  and  feel 
at  home ;  enough  variety  to  prevent  its  be- 
coming fatigued  and  indifferent.  The  physi- 
ology of  the  matter  is  evident.  In  a  compo- 
sition, say,  of  a  picture,  or  of  the  fagade  of  a 
building,  if  there  is  a  medley  of  lines  all  run- 
ning in  different  directions,  the  eye  in  follow- 
ing them  is  distracted  and  worried ;  it  seeks 
to  find  a  way  through  the  maze,  but  is  contin- 
ually balked  and  turned  aside.  The  same  is 
the  case  if  the  lines  all  seem  to  lead  away 
out  of  the  composition  in  different  direc- 
tions; the  eye  then  parts  from  the  work  and 
has  each  time  to  be  brought  back  to  it  from 
the  outside  Dissatisfaction  results  natu- 
rally from  the  jarring  and  irregular  muscular 
movements  thus  caused,  whereas  if  the  lines 


are  arranged  in  ordered  groups,  with  a  way 
through  them,  and  with  a  certain  repetition 
of  forms,  the  eye  feels  at  ease,  and  takes 
pleasure  in  following  the  well-marked  or 
remembered  tracks.  This  is  jusb  the  physi- 
ological side  of  the  artistic  principles  we 
have  already  dealt  with  in  other  connections. 
That  a  work  of  art  should  be  a  unity,  that 
harmony  should  be  studied  in  the  relations 
of  the  parts,  are  principles  which  have  a 
physiological  as  well  as  a  rational  basis. 

"On  the  other  hand,  if  the  eye  is  asked  to 
do  the  same  thing  too  often — to  follow  the 
same  track  over  and  over  again — the  result 
is  boredom,  and  dissatisfaction  of  another 
kind.  Unless  there  is  sufficient  change  of 
direction  in  the  lines  concerned,  or  sufficient 
Contrast,  the  same  result  follows  as  in  the 
case  of  the  prolonged  envisagement  of  a 
single  color.  The  organs  of  vision  demand 
the  stimulus  of  change,  though  they  fret  at 
mere  aimless  zigzaging.  The  matter  will 
be  simplified  if  we  note  the  differing  charac- 
teristics of  a  few  familiar  figures  of  a  simple 
kind,  in  relation  to  the  above  three  condi- 
tions of  formal  beauty. 

"The  same  principles  that  apply  to  beauty 
in  simple  forms  obtain  also  in  the  higher 
walks  of  Composition.  This  pure  pleasure 
of  the  eye  is  provided  for  by  the  architect 
when  he  marshals  his  grand  masses  and 
plans  out  his  smaller  subdivisions;  by  the 
sculptor,  when  he  secures  a  'flow  of  line' 
throughout  his  group;  by  the  painter,  when 
he  distributes  his  tones  and  colors,  and 
sketches  in  his  forms.  There  is  always 
involved  a  balance  of  the  same  qualities  just 
noticed.  The  forms  of  architecture,  depend- 
ing mainly  as  they  do  on  construction,  are 
clear  and  decided,  and  necessarily  involve  a 
large  amount  of  Repetition.  The  rectangu- 
lar mass  of  the  whole  monument  is  broken 
into  smaller  rectangular  masses,  and  these 
are  subdivided  by  horizontal  and  vertical 
features,  and  pierced  by  rectangular  open- 
ings Repetition  is  secured  by  the  symmet- 
rical arrangement  of  these  divisions  on  each 
side  of  a  center,  Contrast  by  the  introduction 
of  oblique  or  curved  forms,  especially  in 
some  predominant  feature  such  as  the  dome 
or  spire. 

"When  we  pass  from  architecture  to  sculp- 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


95 


ture,  we  have  to  deal  with  an  art,  which, 
though  dependent  to  some  extent  on 
grandeur  of  aspect,  cannot  be  in  this  respect 
a  rival  of  the  architectural  monument,  and 
makes  up  for  the  deficiency  by  greater  com- 
plexity and  beauty  in  parts.  The  curves  of 
the  statue  or  group  are  exquisitely  varied, 
and  we  may  find  that  different  forms  of  the 
egg-shape,  with  its  contrast  of  fuller  and 
sharper  curves,  on  the  whole  prevail.  If 
we  examine  frqm  this  point  of  view  the 
classical  figure  of  the  Venus  de'  Medici 
(with  the  arms  removed),  which  has  great 
formal  beauty  though  little  elevation  of  type, 
we  shall  see  how  much  depends  on  such 
contrast  between  rounded  thigh  and  delicate 
knee,  between  the  spacious,  broadly-treated 
shoulders  and  the  more  rapid  fall  and  rise 
of  the  sacral  depression  and  the  glutens. 

"The  art  si  painting  save  when  it  is  only 
reproducing  the  impressions  given  by  archi- 
tecture and  sculpture,  relies  less  than  the 
plastic  art  upon  beauty  of  form.  We  have 
already  seen  that  the  most  painterlike  paint- 
ing is  that  in  which  form  is  rather  understood 
than  emphasized,  and  which  gives  rather  a 
general  impression  of  tone  and  color.  At 
the  same  time,  though  the  picture  does  not 
consist  of  figures  definitely  circumscribed, 
yet  the  elements  of  the  composition  have 
amongst  them  certain  relations  of  form,  on 
which  depend  the  broad  general  effect  of  the 
piece.  It  is  true  that  there  is  a  harmony 
in  coloring  that  is  independent  of  the  shape 
or  size  of  the  tinted  spaces,  just  as  a  tone- 
study  may  be  effective  through  mere  con- 
trast of  light  and  darkness.  Yet  in  practice 
we  speak  continually  of  the  'masses,'  of 
light  and  shadow,  or  of  a  'sweep  of  color,' 
through  a  picture,  and  the  skillful  disposition 
of  these  elements,  as  forms,  is  a  great  part 
of  the  mystery  of  pictorial  composition. 
Such  composition  will  necessarily  have  less 
formal  regularity,  because  less  decision  in 
the  shapes,  than  is  the  case  either  in  archi- 
tecture or  in  sculpture,  but  it  is  none  the 
less  amenable  to  the  same  laws,  and  its  suc- 
cess will  depend  equally  on  Clearness,  Reg- 
ularity and  Contrast. 

"Pictorial  composition  is  so  varied  in  its 
possibilities  that  it  is  sometimes  forgotten 
how  severe  an  element  of  restraint  is  pro- 


VENUS    DE    MEDICI. 
In  the  Uffizi  Gallery,  Florence. 


vided  by  the  frame  or  mural-setting.  The 
field  of  composition  is  always  precisely 
bounded,  and  though  in  mural  work  it  may 
conform  to  various  geometrical  figures,  in 
the  case  of  the  modern  cabinet  picture  it  is 
nearly  always  a  rectangle.  The  first  duty 
of  the  composition  is  to  fill  this  set  space 
with  a  pleasing  combination  of  forms,  or 
passages  of  tone  and  color,  arranged  on  the 
principles  here  under  discussion,  and  these 
must  have  relation  to  the  whole  space  as 
well  as  to  each  other.  Rules  which  have  now 
a  somewhat  antiquated  sound  used  to  be 
formulated  for  pictorial  composition,  as  it 
was  understood  in  the  great  Italian  schools 
of  figure-painting  in  the  sixteenth  century. 
Let  your  chief  mass  or  group, '  it  was  said, 
'be  of  a  pyramidal  form';  'divide  your 
objects  or  figures  into  two  masses  or  groups, 
one  the  chief  mass  or  group  of  the  picture 


96 


REPRESENTA  TIVE  JUDGMENTS 


the  other  much  smaller  but  of  a  well-calcu- 
lated relation  to  it';  'keep  your  principal 
object,  your  highest  light,  or  your  most 
intense  color  well  towards  the  middle  of 
your  field,  though  of  course  not  rigidly  in 
the  center  of  it.'  These  and  many  similar 
precepts  are  now  out  of  date,  and  the  inde- 
pendence and  experimental  character  of 
modern  painting  brook  ill  the  restraint  of 
formulae;  yet  the  painter  is  none  the  less 
observing  all  the  time  certain  unwritten 
laws,  based  on  essentially  the  same  princi- 
ples as  the  old.  ...  But  the  truth  remains 
all  the  time  the  same,  that  the  practice  of 
painting,  like  that  of  every  other  art,  is  not 
a  mere  matter  of  individual  caprice,  but 
must  conform  to  general  principles  of  artis- 
tic treatment. 

"The  difference  is  that  the  art  is  more 
cunningly  concealed,  and  to  the  uninitiated 
the  effect  is  made  to  look  spontaneous.    It  is 
not  really  spontaneous,  for  the  good  impres- 
sionist picture  is  the  result  of  very  careful 
study  and  of  experiments  in  arrangement, 
the  extent  of  which  is  a  studio-secret  hidden 
from  the  admirer  of  the  completed  results  as 
'something   so   fresh    and    natural.'      'The 
Art,' — of  making  up  a  good  picture — is  just 
the   judicious    balancing  of   those   opposite 
qualities  so  often  spoken  of  in  the  preceding 
pages  as  'Unity'  and  'Diversity,'  'Harmony' 
and  'Strength   of   effect,'  'Repetition'    and 
'Contrast' — for  these  are  only  different  ways 
of  putting  the  same  idea.     Yonder  dab  of 
light,  in  the  middle-distance  of  that  impres- 
sionist landscape,  is  introduced  to  save  the 
harmony  of  tender  grays  from  flatness  and 
lack  of  interest.     It  was  put  in  too  light  at 
first,  and  drew  the  attention  unduly  to  that 
particular  part  of   the   picture,  and  it  has 
been  'out'  half-a-dozen  times  before  its  exact 
relation  as  light  to-the  rest  of  the  tone-com- 
position was  determined.     Then  it  was  orig- 
inally  placed   a   trifle   further  to  the  right 
hand,  and  was  found  to  be  too  directly  under 
the  point  in  the  gray  sky  where  the  light  is 
struggling  through  the   clouds.       Now   we 
see,  in  the  finished  piece,  that  it  lies  on  the 
line  of  a  pleasant  curve  with  this  point  and 
the  light  on  the  heap  of  stones  in  the  fore- 
ground, and  brings  these  two  into  a  connec- 
tion which  makes  for  the  general  harmony. 


The  position  and  the  intensity  of  this  patch 
of  light  is  just  as  much  the  concern  of  the 
art  of  composition  as  the  massing  of  the 
parts  of  a  Gothic  fagade,  or  the  drawing 
together  of  the  lower  limbs  of  the  Theseus  (p. 
87)  so  as  to  round  off  the  effect  of  the  whole 
figure.  Here  again,  as  in  sculpture,  will  be 
found  the  value  of  line,  the  magic  potency  of 
which  will  avail  to  bind  the  scattered  ele- 
ments that  straggle  about  within  the  frame 
into  an  organic  unity,  whereon  the  eye  will 
dwell  contented  as  upon  a  work  not  of  nature 
or  of  chance,  but  of  the  order-giving  imag- 
ination of  a  rational  man." — G.  B.  Brown, 
"The  Fine  Arts  "  §§  122,  125-128. 

Dr.  Denman  W.  Ross,  of  Harvard  Uni- 
versity, considers  that  the  principles  of  pure 
design  may  be  reduced  to  three:  Balance, 
Rhythm,  and  Harmony.  These  three  are 
cosmical  principles.  Universal  design  is 
accomplished  according  to  the  same  laws 
that  control  our  little  designs  upon  paper. 

By  Balance  is  meant  the  opposition  of 
attractions  by  which  the  eye  is  held  in  a  cer- 
tain position,  the  center  of  any  composition 
or  design. 

By  Rhythm  is  meant  tnose  shape-connec- 
tions which  carry  the  eye  in  a  consistent 
movement  through  the  details  of  a  design. 

By  Harmony  is  meant  the  unity  which 
results  from  the  deliberate  choice  of  ele- 
ments consistent  with  one  another,  or  the 
reconciliation  of  contrasts. 

Pure  design  is  the  subordinating  of  the 
idea  of  representation  to  that  of  balance, 
rhythm,  and  harmony.  It  is  the  task  of  the 
painter  to  achieve  representation  through 
pure  design. 


BEAUTY   IN    SIMPLE    FIGURES. 
(6) 
We  shall  find  also  that  a  vast  deal 
of    expression    of    character    can 
exist  in  a  very  small  compass  of 
line  expression. 

"I  believe  that  all  true  lines  of  grace  and 
beauty,  though  they  are  necessarily  infinite 
in  variety  and  meaning,  are  capable  of  divi- 
sion into  three  distinct  classes  according  to 
the  respective  spirit  or  genius  of  the  three 
civilizations  out  of  which  they  grew,  and  that 


ON    THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


97 


each  class,  as  it  expresses  a  unity  of  great 
significance  in  the  history  of  the  human 
race,  is  capable  of  concentrating  its  distin- 
guishing characteristics  in  one  representa- 
tive line,  which  may  stand  as  the  symbol, 
the  gesture,  as  it  were,  of  an  era  in  this  his- 
tory. If  this  is  possible,  these  three  symbols 
would  represent  not  only  the  arts  of  three 
great  eras,  but  the  essential  quality  of  their 
life  and  thought,  of  which  these  arts  are 
themselves  the  symbol  and  the  record. 

These  lines,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  are 

. 

not  precise  or  exact,  like  a  formula  of  math- 
ematics, to  which  the  neophyte  can  refer  for 
deductions  of  grace  to  suit  any  premises  or 
conditions.  This,  of  course,  is  contrary  to 
the  spirit  of  beautiful  design ;  and  the  ingen- 
ious Hay,  who  maintained  that  his  "com- 
posite ellipse"  is  capable  of  universal 
application  in  the  arts  of  ornamental  com- 
position, and  that  by  its  use  any  desirable 
lines  in  moldings  or  vases  can  be  mechan- 
ically produced,  especially  Greek  lines,  fell 
into  the  grave  error  of  endeavoring  to  mate- 
rialize and  fix  that  animula  vagula,  blandula, 
that  coy  and  evasive  spirit  of  art,  which  is 
its  peculiar  characteristic,  and  gives  to  its 
works  inspiration,  harmony,  and  poetic  sen- 
timent. Ideal  beauty  can  be  hatched  from 
no  geometrical  eggs.  Of  these  lines  one 
expresses  the  most  subtle  grace  yet  con- 
ceived by  the  mind  or  executed  by  the  hand 
of  man.  This  line  pretends  to  be  merely  a 
type  of  that  large  language  of  forms,  with 
which  the  most  refined  intellects  of  antiquity 
uttered  their  joyful  worship  of  Aphrodite  in 
Greek  art. 

"The  three  great  distinctive  eras  of  art,  in 
a  purely  psychological  sense,  were  the  Egyp- 
tian, the  Grecian,  and  the  Romanesque, — 
including  in  the  latter  term  both  Roman  art 
itself  and  all  subsequent  art,  whether 
derived  directly  or  indirectly  from  Rome,  as 
the  Byzantine,  the  Mahometan,  the  Mediae- 
val, and  the  Renaissance.  Selecting  the 
most  characteristic  works  to  which  these 
great  eras  respectively  gave  birth,  it  is  not 
difficult  by  comparison  to  ascertain  the  mas- 
ter-spirit, or  type,  to  which  each  of  these 
three  families  may  be  reduced.  If  we  place 
these  types  side  by  side,  the  result  will  be  as 
in  the  diagram,  presenting  to  the  eye,  at  one 


ETHNIC    TYPKS    OF    LINES. 


view,  the  concentration  of  three  civilizations, 
DESTINY,   LOVE,  and  LIFE; — destiny,  finding 

utterance  in  the 
stern  and  inflexi- 
ble simplicity  of 
the  tombs  and  obe- 
lisks of  Egypt; 
love,  expressing 
itself  in  the 
statuesque  and 
thoughtful  grace 
of  Grecian  tem- 
ples, statues,  and 
urns;  life,  in  the 
sensuous  and  im- 
pulsive change,  ev- 
ident in  all  the  de- 
velopments of  art, 
since  Greek  be- 
came A  c  h  a  i  a ,  a 
province  of  the  Ro- 
man Empire.  In  the  central  type,  as  ex- 
hibited in  the  diagram,  we  see  a  happy 
mingling  of  the  essential  qualities  of  the 
other  two.  The  genius  of  Greece,  on  the 
one  hand,  tempers  the  rigid  repose  of 
Egypt  with  the  passion  of  life,  and,  on  the 
other,  restrains  the  passion  of  life  with  a 
spirit  of  intellectual  tranquillity.  Humanly 
speaking,  it  seems  to  stand  for  a  condition 
of  perfect 
art,  r  e  p  r  e  - 
sen  ting  the 
highest  de- 
velopment of 
c  r  e  a  t  i  o  n  by 
man.  At  one 
point  in  the 
history  of  the 
race  the  se- 
cret of  per- 
petual youth 
seemed  to 
have  been 
disclosed,  at 
once  grave 
with  memory 
and  jocund 
with  hope. 
This  interme- 
diate line  iS  GRECIAN  URN. 
. ,  c  The  scene  represents  an  ancestral  offer- 

the  essence  of  fng  at  a  tomb. 


REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS 


the  age  of  Pericles;  and  in  it  'the  capable 
eye*  may  discover  the  pose  of  the  Cnidian 
Venus  of  Praxiteles,  of  the  Jupiter  Olympus 
of  Phidias,  and  the  other  lost  wonders  of 
ancient  chisels,  and,  more  directly,  the  ten- 
der severity  of  Doric  capitals  and  the  secret 
grace  of  the  shafts  of  the  Parthenon." — //. 
Van  Brunt,  '•'•Greek  Lines,'"  pp.  22-25. 

"Generally  speaking  figures  bounded  by 
curves  are  more  pleasing  than  those  made 
up  of  straight  lines.  The  eye  is  more  dis- 
posed to  follow  a  curve  and  the  latter  has 
also  the  element  of  Variety,  while  on  the 
other  hand  the  rectilinear  form  has  the 
advantage  in  Clearness  and  in  Regularity. 

"The  square  and  the  circle  are  the  sim- 
plest figures  of  the  two  kinds.  They  possess 
Clearness  and  Regularity  but  lack  Contrast. 

"Figures  that  are  nearly  but  not  quite 
square  or  circular  offend  because  they  are 
not  Clear.  The  eye  does  not  know  how  to 
take  them,  Regularity  and  Contrast  are  at 
odds  in  them. 

"The  most  pleasing  figures  of  both  kinds 
are  those  in  which  there  is  a  pronounced 
element  of  Contrast  while  the  unity  of  effect 
is  still  preserved. 

' '  In  the  case  of  curved  figures, 
if  the  circle  is  too  regular, 
the  oval  with  circular  ends 
offends  through  its  want  of 
clearness—it  is  a  circle  yet  at 
the  same  /* — •>.  time  not  a  circle.  On 
the  other  f  \  hand  the  ellipse  unites 
some  ofl  I  the  most  important 

aesthetic  I  I  qualities   of    form.      It 

is  Clear,  \^__^X  because  its  bounding 
line  changes  its  di-  x"~^v  rection  accord- 
ing to  a  law  of  its  /  \  own  quite  dis- 
tinct from  the  law  I  j  governing  the 
sweep  of  the  cir-  \  j  cle;  it  has  Va- 
riety, and  at  the  \*^,S  same  time  the 

symmetry   of   the    design     x "^    keeps 

it    studiously  uniform.  (  \  One  fur- 

ther step  in  the   direction  I  /  of   em- 

phasizing the  element  of  \  1  Variety 
is  taken  when  the  ellipti-  \^/  c  a  1  fig- 
ure is  turned  to  that  of  an  egg, 
another  when  it  becomes  pear- 
shaped.  These  forms  differ  in 
that  the  ellipse  is  so  far  sym met- 
rical that  it  can  be  cut  by  the  two 


diameters  into  four  equal  sections,  the  egg 
falls  into  two  equal  sections  on  each  side  of 
the  long  axis,  while  in  the  pear-shape  there 
is  no  exact  repetition  of  the  parts.  In  itself 
the  egg-form  may  be  pronounced  on  the 
whole  to  be  the  best,  and  it  will  be  observed 
that  this  is  the  generating  form  of  most  of 
the  beautiful  Greek  vases. 

"Similarly  in  the  case  of  rectilinear  fig- 
ures. The  rectangle  in  all  its  modifications 
has  the  advantage  in  Regularity  over  all 
rhomboidal  and  even  polygonal  forms,  and 
is  so  largely  the 
predominant  fig- 
ure in  architec- 
tural composi- 
tions that  it  is 
all  we  need  take 
account  of  here. 

Among  rectangular  figures  the  square  holds 
the  same  relative  position  as  the  circle 
among  curved — is  too  Regular  for  the  high- 
est beauty,  while  a  parallelogram  that  is 
nearly  but  not  quite  a  square  offends  against 
the  canon  of  Clearness. 

"It  may  be  remarked  on  this,  that  in  a 
matter  of  this  kind  there  can  be  no  absolute 
best,  because  the  aesthetic  judgment  can 
rarely  or  ever  be  sufficiently  disinterested  to 
decide  on  grounds  of  purely  formal  satisfac- 
tion. Other  considerations  are  bound  to 
make  themselves  felt  as  a  disturbing  influ- 
ence. A  rectangle  or  a  curved  figure  in 

architecture  or 
sculpture  or  paint- 
ing is  not  a  mere 
form,  but  it  has 
some  special  use 
or  function,  or 
represents  some- 
thing in  nature. 
These  external 

relations  are  continually  molding  the  forms 
used  by  the  artist,  and  make  them  other 
than  they  would  be  if  created  to  supply 
mere  physiological  pleasure  to  the  organs 
of  vision.  Thus  it  may  be  perfectly  true 
that  a  rectangle  of  about  5  to  8  is  a  pleas- 
ing form  and  will  for  that  reason  make  its 
appearance  in  architectural  compositions, 
as  defining  the  whole  mass,  or  its  main 
divisions,  or  detailed  portions  such  as  win- 


THREE    RECTANGULAR    FIG- 
URES. 


ON  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  ART. 


99 


dow-openings.  Yet  we  must  remem- 
ber that  there  are  many  considerations 
besides  abstract  beauty  that  go  to  de- 
termine architectural  forms.  A  form 
may  be  extended  in  one  direction  be- 
yond the  limits  of  pure  beauty  in  order 
to  increase  its  significance,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  upward  elongation  of  the 
proportions  in  Gothic.  The  square  form 
for  an  elevation  would  be  rejected  on 
purely  aesthetic  grounds,  but  Mr.  Rus- 
kin  especially  praises  the  'mighty 
square*  of  the  Palazzo  Vecchio  at  Flor- 
ence for  its  look  of  concentrated  power. 
Agairi  in  all  construction,  though  the 
Curved  form  may  be  more  beautiful  in 
itself  than  the  straight,  yet  when  the 
idea  of  support  has  to  be  conveyed,  the 
rigidity  of  the  latter  makes  it  far  pref- 
erable. In  the  human  figure  the 
strength  of  the  male  is  expressed  by 
lines  approaching  nearer  to  the  straight  than 
those  which  bound  the  softer  and  more 
swelling  forms  of  the  woman.  The  sculptor 
will  continually  sacrifice  pure  beauty  in  these 
respects  to  expression,  though  when  judging 
simply  by  the  eye  he  will  recognize  a  differ- 
ence of  abstract  beauty  in  simple  curved 
figures." — G.  B.  Brown,  ''''The  Fine  Arts," 
§§  123,  124.. 


s 


OME     ARCHITECTURAL     PRIN- 
CIPLES. (7) 


The  Logic  of  Structure.  —  In  any- 
thing which  is  meant  to  serve  a 
useful  purpose  the  function  of  the  object 
will  dictate  its  form  to  a  remarkable  extent. 
A  milk  pitcher  must  have  room  to  hold  the 
fluid,  firm  base,  handle  hung  where  it  will 
be  near  the  center  of  gravity  when  one  is 
pouring,  lip  so  that  milk  will  not  run  down 
the  outside,  opening  wide  enough  so  that  it 
can  be  easily  cleansed,  small  enough  so  that 
it  can  be  carried  without  spilling.  It  is  good 
practice  to  analyze  various  objects  from  this 
point  of  view.  How  perfectly  a  row-boat,  a 
bath-tub,  a  building,  etc.,  fulfills  its  pur- 
pose. This  in  fact  is  the  fundamental  art 
quality  of  any  useful  thing  from  a  rocking 
chair  to  a  palace,  and  without  this  no  "dec- 


PALAZZO    VECCHIO    IN    FLORENCE. 

On   the  left   is  the  statue  of  Savonarola   who  was  burned  on  that 
spot ;  on  the  right  is  the  Loggia  del  Lanzi. 


oration"    can    ever   disguise   its   futility   or 
make  it  beautiful. 

The   Artistic   Emphasis    of    Structure. — 

This  principle  is  closely  allied  to  the  logic  of 
structure.  It  is  the  accentuation  of  structure 
for  the  purpose  of  making  the  function  more 
quickly,  easily,  and  clearly  evident.  This  is 
nowhere  more  apparent  than  in  the  doorway 
of  the  Gothic  Cathedral,  where  the  lines  of 
the  door  are  reduplicated  over  and  over 
again,  and  the  height  is  emphasized  until  the 
idea  of  the  door  is  one  of  the  thoughts  of  the 
whole  architectural  effect.  It  is  an  invita- 
tion to  entrance.  The  obedience  to  the  law 
is  almost  instinctive.  No  door  so  humble 
but  it  has  a  line  or  two  around  to  mark  it; 
even  a  pasteboard  box  has  its  edges  indi- 
cated. The  cornice  of  a  building  is  a  sort  of 
guide  to  the  observer,  that  stays  there  for 
the  purpose  of  saying,  "You  see,  we  have 
got  to  the  top  of  the  wall  now.  This  is  the 
place  where  the  roof  begins.  "  Such  a  pur- 
pose is  served  by  the  eyebrow  above  the  eye. 
Such  emphases  also  seem  to  be  intimations 
of  respect  for  the  thing  decorated,  the  funda- 
mental principle  of  all  decorative  design. 

Definition  of  Architecture.  —  "Architec- 
ture, then,  from  the  point  of  view  from 
which  I  am  asking  the  reader  to  regard  it — 
and  the  only  point  of  view  in  which  it  is 
worth  the  serious  regard  of  thoughtful  peo- 


100 


REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS 


pie — is  the  art  of  erecting  expressive  and 
beautiful  buildings.  I  say  expressive  and 
beautiful,  and  I  put  expressive  first,  because 
it  is  the  characteristic  which  we  can  at  least 
realize  even  when  we  cannot  realize  what 
can  fairly  be  called  beauty,  and  it  is  the 
characteristic  which  comes  first  in  the  order 
of  things.  A  building  may  be  expressive 


GOTHIC    CATHEDRAL    AT    NANTES. 


and  thereby  have  interest,  without  rising 
into  beauty;  but  it  can  never  be,  architec- 
turally speaking,  beautiful,  unless  it  has 
expression.  And  what  do  we  mean  by 
expression  in  a  building?  That  brings  us  to 
the  very  pith  of  the  matter. 

"We  know  pretty  well  what  we  mean  when 
we  say  that  a  painted  or  sculptured  figure  is 


expressive.  We  mean  that,  while  correctly 
representing  the  structure  of  the  human 
figure,  it  also  conveys  to  our  minds  a  dis- 
tinct idea  of  a  special  emotion  or  sentiment, 
such  as  human  beings  are  capable  of  feeling 
and  expressing  by  looks  and  actions. 
Expression  in  this  sense  a  building  cannot 
be  said  to  have.  It  is  incapable  of  emotion, 
and  it  has  no  mobility 
of  surface  or  feature. 
Yet  I  think  we  shall  see 
that  it  is  capable  of  ex- 
pression in  more  senses 
than  one.  It  may,  in 
the  first  place,  reflect 
more  or  less  the  emotion 
of  those  who  designed 
it,  or  it  may  express  the 
facts  of  its  own  internal 
structure  and  arrange- 
ment. The  former, how- 
ever, can  only,  I  think, 
be  said  to  be  realized 
in  the  case  of  architec- 
ture of  the  highest  class, 
and  when  taken  collec- 
tively as  a  typical  style. 
For  instance,  we  can  all 
pretty  well  agree  that 
the  mediaeval  cathedral 
indicates  an  emotion  of 
aspiration  on  the  part  of 
its  builders.  The  age 
that  built  the  cathedrals 
longed  to  soar  in  some 
way,  and  this  was  the 
way  then  open  to  it, 
and  it  sent  up  its  soul 
in  spreading  vaults,  and 
in  pinnacles  and  spires. 
So  also  we  can  never 
look  at  Greek  architec- 
ture without  seeing  in 
it  the  reflection  of  a 

nature  refined,  precise,  and  critical ;  loving 
grace  and  finish,  but  content  to  live  with 
the  graces  and  the  muses  without  any 
aspirations  that  spurned  this  earth.  We 
can  hardly  go  further  than  this  in  attrib- 
uting emotional  expression  to  architecture. 
But  in  a  more  restricted  sense  of  the  word 
'expression,'  a  building  may  express  very 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


101 


definitely  its  main  constructive  facts,  its 
plan  and  arrangement,  to  a  certain  extent 
even  its  purpose,  so  far  at  least  that  we  may 
be  able  to  identify  the  class  of  structure  to 
which  it  belongs.  It  not  only  may,  but  it 
ought  to  do  this,  unless  the  architecture  is 
to  be  a  mere  ornamental  screen  for  conceal- 
ing the  prosaic  facts  of  the  structure.  There 
is  a  good  deal  of  architecture  in  the  world 
which  is  in  fact  of  this  kind — an  ornamental 
screen  unconnected  with  the  constructional 
arrangement  of  the  building;  nor  is  such 
architecture  to  be  entirely  scouted;  it  may 
be  a  very  charming  piece  of  scenery  in  itself, 
and  you  may  even  make  a  very  good  theo- 
retical defense  for  it,  from  a  certain  point  of 
view ;  but  on  the  whole,  architecture  on  that 
principle  becomes  uninteresting;  you  very 
soon  tire  of  it;  it  is  a  mask  rather  than  a 
countenance,  and  the  indulgence  in  it  tends 
to  the  production  of  a  dull  uniformity  of 
conventional  design. 

"For  we  must  remember  that  architec- 
ture, although  a  form  of  artistic 'expression, 
is  not,  like  painting  and  sculpture,  unfet- 
tered by  practical  considerations;  it  is  an 
art  inextricably  bound  up  with  structural 
conditions  and  practical  requirements.  A 
building  is  erected  first  for  convenience 
and  shelter,  secondly  only  for  appearance,- 
except  in  the  case  of  such  works  as  monu- 
ments, triumphal  arches,  etc.,  which  repre- 
sent architectural  effect  pure  and  simple, 
uncontrolled  by  practical  requirements. 
With  such  exceptions,  therefore,  a  building 
ought  to  express  in  its  external  design  its 
internal  planning  and  arrangement;  in  other 
words,  the  architectural  design  should  arise 
out  of  the  plan  and  disposition  of  the  inte- 
rior, or  be  carried  on  concurrently  with  it, 
not  designed  as  a  separate  problem.  Then 
a  design  is  dependent  on  structural  condi- 
tions also,  and  if  these  are  not  observed  the 
building  will  not  stand;  and  hence  it  is  obvi- 
ous that  the  architectural  design  must  ex- 
press these  structural  conditions;  it  must 
not  appear  to  stand,  or  be  constructed,  in 
a  way  in  which  it  could  not  stand  (like  the 
modern  shop-fronts  which  are  supposed  to 
rest  on  sheets  of  plate -glass) ;  and  its  whole 
exterior  appearance  ought  to  be  in  accord- 
ance with,  and  convey  the  idea  of,  the  man- 


ner   and    principle    on     which    it    is    con- 
structed. 

"Architecture  is,  like  music,  a  metaphys- 
ical art;  it  deals  with  the  abstract  qualities 
of  proportion,  balance  of  form,  and  direction 
of  line,  but  without  any  imitation  of  the  con- 
crete facts  of  nature.  The  comparison 
between  architecture  and  music  is  an  exer- 
cise of  the  fancy  which  may  indeed  be 
pushed  too  far,  but  there  is  really  a  definite 
similarity  between  them  which  it  is  useful 
to  notice.  For  instance,  the  regular  rhythm, 
or  succession  of  accentuated  points  in  equal 
times,  which  plays  so  important  a  part  in 
musical  form,  is  discernible  in  architecture 
as  a  rhythm  in  space.  This  may  be  illus- 
trated to  the  eye  by  spacing  out  music  type 
so  that  there  is  an  equal  space  between  the 
notes  which  occur  at  equal  times,  as  at  B; 
erecting  a  piece  of  architectural  design  over 
it,  the  main  accentuated  portions  of  the 
design  in  A,  the  columns,  correspond  with 
the  main  accentuated  points  of  the  music; 
the  repetition  of  the  triglyph  blocks  at  a 
forms  a  subordinate  rhythm,  which  corre- 
sponds with  that  of  the  four  crochets  in  the 
music.  The  row  of  dentils  at  b  forms  a 
rhythm  of  much  smaller  intervals ;  so  small, 
that  like  a  long  shake  in  music,  its  pulsa- 
tions may  remain  independent  of  the  larger 
divisions  of  the  rhythm.  We  may  treat  a 
cottage  type  of  design,  no  doubt,  with  a 
playful  irregularity,  especially  if  this  fol- 
lows and  is  suggested  by  an  irregularity  of 
plan ;  but  in  architecture  on  a  grand  scale, 
whether  it  be  in  a  Greek  colonnade  or  a 
Gothic  arcade,  we  cannot  tolerate  irregular- 
ity of  spacing  except  where  some  construc- 
tive necessity  affords  an  obvious  and  higher 
reason  for  it.  Then,  again,  we  find  the 
unwritten  law  running  throughout  all  archi- 
tecture that  a  progress  of  line  in  one  direc- 
tion requires  to  be  stopped  in  a  marked  and 
distinct  manner  when  it  has  run  its  course, 
and  we  find  a  similarly  felt  necessity  in 
regard  to  musical  form.  The  repetition, 
so  common  at  the  close  of  a  piece  of  music, 
of  the  same  chord  several  times  in  succes- 
sion, is  exactly  analogous  to  the  repetition  of 
cross  lines  at  the  necking  of  a  Doric  column 
to  stop  the  vertical  lines  of  the  fluting,  or  to 
the  strongly  marked  horizontal  lines  of  a 


IO2 


REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS 


cornice  which  form  the  termination  of  the 
height  or  upward  progress  of  an  architec- 
tural design. " — H.  H.  Statliam,  "Architec- 
ture for  General  Readers,"  pp.  j-jr,  6-8. 


n 


n 


n 


ANALOGY    BETWEEN.  ARCHITECTURE   AND    MUSIC. 


Mass  and  Stability. — "The  reader  who 
remembers  similar  experiences  will  agree 
that  such  an  impression  is  primarily  one  of 
greatness,  of  mass.  The  eye  is  filled  with 
an  imposing  presence ;  what  we  perceive  is  a 
structure  vast  beyond  the  measure  of  its 
surroundings,  vast  beyond  the  scale  of  the 
works  of  men,  and  akin  rather  to  the  colos- 
sal forms  of  the  material  universe.  The 
particular  shape  and  contour  of  the  mass,  its 
inner  divisions,  the  relation  of  its  parts,  the 
light  and  shade  and  color  that  chequer  or 
play  about  its  surface — these  all  escape  us, 
and  for  the  moment  such  inquiry  into  detail 
seems  even  trivial  in  face  of  the  awe-inspir- 
ing height  and  breadth  of  the  whole.  This 
is  then  the  first  essential  of  architectural 
effect — that  which  the  late  Mr.  Sedding  pic- 
turesquely describes  as  the  'sheer  weight 
and  vigor  of  masses  .  .  .  employed  as  an 
attribute  of  expression, — the  undivided 
weight  of  solid  stone,  colossal  scale,  broad 
sunshine,  and  unrelieved  gloom.' 

"  'The  first  and  most  obvious  element  of 
architectural  grandeur,'  writes  James  Fer- 
gusson,  'is  size — a  large  edifice  being  always 
more  imposing  than  a  small  one,'  and  he 


adds  soon  afterwards,  'next  to  size  the  most 
important  element  is  stability.'     Magnitude 
and  stability  may  be  included  together  under 
the  single    term   'mass,'   which   we  may  ac- 
cordingly take  as  the  primary   element 
of  artistic  effect  in  architecture. 

"Stability  the  writer  last  quoted  ex- 
plains as  'that  excess  of  strength  over 
mere  mechanical  requirement  which 
is  necessary  thoroughly  to  satisfy  the 
mind,  and  to  give  to  the  building  a 
monumental  character,  with  an  appear- 
ance that  it  could  resist  the  shocks  of 
time  or  the  violence  of  man  for  ages 
yet  to  come,'  and  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  impression  of  immovable, 
rock-like  strength  mingles  very  readily 
with  our  apprehension  of  the  greatness 
of  an  architectural  monument,  and 
combines  with  it  to  convey  the  assthetic 
idea  of  Sublimity — an  idea,  it  will  be 
observed,  that  certainly  does  not  come 
under  the  head  of  mere  'pleasure  of 
the  eye.'  '  — G.  B.  Brown,  "  Tlie  Fine 
Arts"  §§  101,  102. 


ACTION    AND    REPOSE. (8) 
In  two  famous   examples   of    the 
Discobolus,  that  by  Naucydes  and 
that  by  Myron  (the  former  is  rep- 
resented on  page  103,  the  latter  on  page  21), 
we  notice  that  the  sculptors  have  chosen  two 
different   parts    of   the    same   action.     The 
game   of   throwing   the    discus   must   have 
offered  many  parallels  to  our  ball  throwing. 
In   the   statue    of   Naucydes    the    player  is 
depicted  in  the  final  concentration  of  all  his 
energies,  his  thought  upon  the  mark  or  goal. 
Myron's  youth,  on  the  other  hand,  is  in  the 
midst  of  the  action. 

But  both  have  been  taken  during  an 
instant  of  repose.  Were  it  not  so  the  action 
would  be  unintelligible.  Try  to  stop  your- 
self in  the  midst  of  a  movement,  and  you 
will  see  why. 

"Any  tendency  of  the  forms  to  appear  too 
broken  and  separate  is  counteracted  by  the 
creation  of  certain  dominant  lines,  which 
secure  Clearness  by  guiding  the  eye  through 
the  composition,  and  embrace  in  a  single 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


103 


sweep  the  boundaries  of  many  of  the  masses 
in  combination.  The  well-known  Discobo- 
lus of  Myron  (the  head  is  wrongly  adjusted) 
is  a  capital  example  of  such  a  use  of  line. 
The  eye  follows  the  contours  in  a  single 
sweep,  from  the  hand  with  the  discus  along 
the  right  arm  across  the  shoulders  and  down 
the  left  arm,  whence  it  passes  along  the  left 
leg  to  the  foot.  Here  is  one  large  line 
dominating  the  whole  composition  and  giv- 
ing the  repose  and  unity  required  by  art, 
while  there  is  the  needful  opposition  sup- 
plied by  the  strong  zigzag  of  the  bowed  torso 
and  the  bent  right  leg,  which  brings  the 
whole  again  into  full  vitality  and  vigor." 
—G.  B.  Brown,  "The  Fine  Arts,"  §  126. 

It  is  hardly  fanciful  to  note  that  the  long 
line  which  Mr.  Brown  calls  our  attention  to 
is  of  much  the  same  curve  as  that  taken  by 
a  stone  hurled  forward  and  upward  into  the 
air.  A  splendid,  vigorous  line ! 

I  hope  that  these  thoughts  will  lead  the 
reader  to  notice  with  ever-increasing  pleas- 
ure the  pageant  action  in  the  world  about 
him.  Notice  the  draught  horses  in  the 
street,  the  way  they  place  their  hoofs,  the 
straining  muscles,  the  position  of  the  head. 

A  few  nights  ago  I  saw  a  noble  example. 
A  mounted  lamplighter  darted  up,  reined 
his  horse  suddenly,  and  with  a  single 
perfectly-controlled  movement  lit  the  lamp 
high  above  his  head.  It  was  simply  mag- 
nificent! 

Du  Maurier  has  given  us  an  insight  into 
the  thought  of  the  artist  with  regard  to  fine 
lines:  "And  in  truth  they  were  astonish- 
ingly beautiful  feet,  such  as  one  only  sees  in 
pictures  and  statues — a  true  inspiration  of 
shape  and  color,  all  made  up  of  delicate 
lengths  and  subtly  modulated  curves  and 
noble  straightnesses  and  happy  little  dimpled 
arrangements  in  innocent  young  pink  and 
white.  .  .  .  The  shape  of  these  lovely, 
slender  feet  (that  were  neither  large  nor 
small),  facsimiled  in  dusty  pale  plaster  of 
Paris,  survives  on  the  shelves  and  walls  of 
many  a  studio  throughout  the  world,  and 
many  a  sculptor  yet  unborn  has  yet  to  marvel 
at  their  strange  perfection,  in  studious 
despair." — George  du  Maurier,  '"'Trilby,"  in 
Harper's  Magazine,  vol.  88. 

Repose  is  a  difficult    quality  to  explain. 


DISCOBOLUS    OF    NAUCYDES. 
In  the  Vatican,  Rome. 

We  feel  it,  even  when  we  cannot  define  it. 
It  is  not  difficult  to  see  what  we  mean  when 
we  say  that  such  and  such  a  lady  has  a 
"reposeful  manner."  (It  certainly  does  not 
mean  that  she  looks  as  if  she  were  going  to 
sleep.  It  may  be  coupled  with  great  ani- 
mation.) It  is  more  difficult  to  see  what  is 
meant  when  we  ascribe  this  quality  to  a 
statue  like  Myron's,  where  a  violent  action 
is  portrayed. 

Consider  the  action  of  a  great  driving- 
wheel  in  the  city  water  works.  There  is 
tremendous  action — with  repose.  Think  of 
Christ  driving  out  the  mob  from  the 
temple.  There  was  flaming  indignation  and 
a  stinging  whip,  but  we  do  not  suppose  any 
loss  of  dignity,  any  misapplication  of 
energy. 

This  is  what  I  think  we  mean  by  repose  in 
action.  The  faculties  all  under  perfect  con- 
trol. No  loss  of  power.  The  action  consist- 
ently, consummately  carried  out. 


IO4 


REPRESENTA  TIVE  JUDGMENTS 


"Of  Repose,  or  the  Type  of  Divine  Perma- 
nence.—  There  is  probably  no  necessity 
more  imperatively  felt  by  the  artist,  no  test 
more  unfailing  of  the  greatness  of  artificial 
treatment,  than  that  of  the  appearance  of 
repose;  yet  there  is  no  quality  whose  sem- 
blance in  matter  is  more  difficult  to  define 
or  illustrate.  Nevertheless,  I  believe  that 
our  instinctive  love  of  it,  as  well  as  the 
cause  to  which  I  attribute  that  love  (although 
here  also,  as  in  the  former  cases,  I  contend 
not  for  the  interpretation,  but  for  the  fact), 
will  be  readily  allowed  by  the  reader.  As 
opposed  to  passion,  change,  fullness,  or 
laborious  exertion,  Repose  is  the  especial 
and  separating  characteristic  of  the  eternal 
mind  and  power.  It  is  the  'I  am'  of  the 
Creator  opposed  to  the  'I  become'  of  all  crea- 
tures; it  is  the  sign,  alike  of  the  supreme 
knowledge  which  is  incapable  of  surprise, 
the  supreme  volition  which  is  incapable  of 
change ;  it  is  the  stillness  of  the  beams  of 
the  eternal  chambers  laid  upon  the  variable 
waters  of  ministering  creatures. 

"Repose,  as  it  is  expressed  in  material 
things,  is  either  a  simple  appearance  of  per- 
manence and  quietness,  as  in  the  massy 
forms  of  a  mountain  or  rock  accompanied  by 
the  lulling  effect  of  all  mighty  sight  and 
sound,  which  all  feel  and  none  define  (it 
would  be  less  sacred  if  more  explicable)  or 
else  it  is  repose  proper,  the  rest  of  things  in 
which  there  is  vitality  or  capability  of 
motion  actual  or  imagined ;  and  with  respect 
to  these  the  expression  of  repose  is  greater 
in  proportion  to  the  amount  and  sublimity 
of  the  action  which  is  not  taking  place,  as 
well  as  to  the  intensity  of  the  negation  of  it. 
Thus  we  do  not  speak  of  repose  in  a  pebble, 
because  the  motion  of  a  pebble  has  nothing 
in  it  of  energy  or  vitality,  neither  its  repose 
or  stability.  But  having  once  seen  a  great 
rock  come  down  a  mountain  side,  we  have  a 
noble  sensation  of  its  rest,  now  imbedded 
immovably  among  the  fern;  because  the 
power  and  fearfulness  of  its  motion  were 
great,  and  its  stability  and  negation  of 
motion  are  now  great  in  proportion.  Hence 
the  imagination,  which  delights  in  nothing 
more  than  in  the  embracing  of  the  charac- 
ters of  repose,  effects  this  usually  by  either 
attributing  to  things  visibly  energetic  an 


ideal  stability,  or  to  things  visibly  stable 
an  ideal  activity  or  vitality.  Thus  Words- 
worth speaks  of  the  cloud,  which  in  itself 
has  too  much  of  changefulness  for  his  pur- 
pose, as  one 

"That  heareth  not  the  loud  winds  when  they  call, 
And  moveth  altogether,  if  it  move  at  all." 

And  again  the  children,  which,  that  it  may 
remove  from  them  the  child-restlessness,  the 
imagination  conceives  as  rooted  flowers, 

"Beneath  the  old  gray  oak,  as  violets,  lie." 

On  the  other  hand,  the  scattered  rocks, 
which  have  not,  as  such,  vitality  enough  for 
rest,  are  gifted  with  it  by  the  living  image: 
they 

"Lie  couched  around  us  like  a  flock  of  sheep." 

— Jo/in  Ruskin,  "Modern  Painters,"  Part  j, 

Cliap.  7,  §§  /  and  2. 

"Repose  and  equanimity,  in  their  highest 
degree,  are  incompatible  with  action.  The 
most  elevated  idea  of  beauty,  therefore,  can 
neither  be  aimed  at,  nor  preserved,  even  in 
figures  of  the  deities,  who  must  of  necessity 
be  represented  imder  a  human  shape.  But 
the  expression  was  made  commensurate,  as 
it  were,  with  the  beauty,  and  legulated  by 
it.  With  the  ancient  artists,  therefore, 
beauty  was  the  chief  object  of  expression, 
just  as  the  cymbal  guides  all  the  other 
instruments  in  a  band,  although  they  seem- 
ingly overpower  it.  A  figure  may,  how- 
ever, be  called  beautiful  even  though 
expression  should  preponderate  over  beauty, 
just  as  we  give  the  name  of  wine  to  a  liquor 
of  which  the  larger  portion  is  water.  Here 
we  also  see  an  indication  of  the  celebrated 
doctrine  of  Empedocles  relative  to  discord 
and  harmony,  by  whose  opposing  actions  the 
things  of  this  world  are  arranged  in  their 
present  situation.  Beauty  without  expres- 
sion might  properly  be  termed  insignificant, 
and  expression  without  beauty,  unpleasing; 
but  from  the  action  of  one  upon  the  other, 
and  the  union  of  the  two  opposing  qualities, 
beauty  derives  additional  power  to  affect,  to 
persuade,  and  to  convince." — J.  Winckel- 
mann,  "History  of  Ancient  Art,"  Vol.  II. 
p.  113. 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


105 


COLOR.  (9) 
The  purpose  of  our  readings  in 
color  is  mainly  to   cultivate  the 
perception  of  color  in  nature.    We 
need  to   look   at  things  more   intelligently. 
The  ideal  way  to  study  is  to  get  some  paints 
and  paint  from  nature  under  a  good  teacher, 
not  for  the  sake  of  the  picture,  but  for  the 
sake  of  learning  *to  see.     Half  a  dozen  les- 
sons with  a  limited  pallette  would  do  much 
for  the  learner.     But  if  we  cannot  do  this,  we 
can  make  certain  beginnings  without  it. 

Undertake  the  problems  in  observation 
proposed  by  Ruskin.  Look  at  nature  and 
keep  on  looking,  but  look  for  something 
definite.  Take,  for  instance,  the  sky.  Keep 
a  little  book  and  note  its  gradations  under 
various  circumstances.  At  evening  in  the 
west  notice  how  it  runs  from  a  bluish  above 
down  through  greenish  to  yellowish  to 
orange  to  red  to  violet.  This  is  the  order  of 
the  spectrum  colors.  Analyze  a  sun-ray 
with  a  glass  prism,  and  notice  the  order  of 
the  spectrum-colors  thus  obtained.  Com- 
mit it  to  memory.  You  will  find  it  in  many 
other  places  in  nature.  It  is  her  favorite 
color  rhythm.  Now  study  the  sky  in  the 
east  at  sunset.  Watch  the  light  on  the 
buildings.  You  will  be  astonished  and 
delighted  to  note  that  the  east  is  often  more 
beautiful  than  the  west  at  sunset.  If  our 
eyes  had  not  been  so  dull,  we  should  have 
remarked  its  more  subtle  beauty.  Trace 
the  gradations  of  the  sky  on  a  "gray  day." 
Do  the  same  at  night.  Make  notes  and  com- 
pare them. 

The  best  principle  to  proceed  on  is  this: 
There  are  three  colors  in  nature — red,  yel- 
low, and  blue.  Every  other  color  is  made 
up  of  combinations  of  these.  The  question 
then  to  ask  of  yourself  in  every  case  is  this: 
Does  that  object  which  I  am  looking  at  seem 
more  yellowish,  more  reddish,  or  more 
bluish  than  the  objects  next  to  it?  If  you 
continue  at  this  with  some  perseverance, 
you  will  begin  to  see  things  that  will  sur- 
prise you. 

"Every  traveler,  not  color-blind,  who  in 
the  month  of  October  drives  along  the  broad 
road  that  runs  past  the  Clos  de  Vougeot 
through  Nuits  to  Beaune,  sees  on  his  right 


hand  such  a  perpetual  blaze  of  golden  color 
over  the  vast  expanse  of  sloping  vineyards, 
that  the  least  observant  cannot  help  talking 
about  it  and  wondering  at  it.  But  I  doubt 
whether  anybody  who  has  not  tried  to  paint 
knows  of  how  many  elements  that  color  is 
composed:  what  subtle,  delicate  grays  there 
are  in  it,  what  strange  purples,  what  lender, 
exquisite  greens,  what  spots  of  sanguine 
crimson,  what  grave  and  sober  sorts  of  rus- 
set, what  paleness  of  fading  yellow,  nearer 
the  color  of  primroses  than  of  gold.  The 
impression  given  by  the  union  of  all  these 
colors  is  invariably  that  of  deep,  reddish,  very 
rich  gold;  but  pray  how  can  a  painter  paint 
so  composite  a  color  without  first  decompos- 
ing it?  On  finding  himself  in  front  of  such 
a  burning  expanse  of  vine  leaves,  of  whose 
countless  millions  not  two  are  colored  pre- 
cisely alike,  a  painter's  first  thought  is  to  sift 
out  and  analyze  the  elements  of  his  own 
impression  in  order  that  he  may  himself 
afterwards,  by  the  re-union  of  the  same  ele- 
ments, reproduce  the  impression  on  the 
minds  of  others.  For  the  public  mind  is,  on 
this  question,  more  critical  than  its  habitual 
simplicity  of  language  would  lead  us  to  sup- 
pose. A  gentleman  who  has  been  driving 
through  the  wine  district  in  autumn  uses 
such  simple,  emphatic  words  to  describe  his 
impressions  that  you  would  imagine  a  little 
pure  cadmium  yellow  might  satisfy  him,  and 
that  the  grays  and  purples  were  superfluous. 
Not  so.  He  would  at  once  feel  that  the 
cadmium  was  crude  (though  no  cruder  than 
his  own  word  'golden'),  and  to  satisfy  him 
you  would  have  to  paint  the  grays  and  pur- 
ples, to  accomplish  which  you  must  first 
analyze  them 

"Has  the  reader  every  actually  looked  at  a 
cloud,  or  a  tree,  or  a  running  brook,  or  a 
calm  lake?  Perhaps  not,  for  the  majority 
never  look  at  these  things;  they  like  pleasant 
landscape,  they  benefit  by  its  exquisite  influ- 
ences, sunshine,  lovely  colors,  sweet  sounds, 
and  pure,  refreshing  air:  all  these  they  truly 
appreciate  and  value  in  their  way,  but  they 
no  more  study  them  than  an  amorous  boy 
studies  the  anatomy  of  the  fair  face  he 
delights  in.  External  nature  is,  to  the 
mass  of  mankind,  a  source  of  sensuous 
refreshment,  not  a  matter  of  laborious 


io6 


REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS 


HARBOR    AT    SUNRISE. 
By  Claude  Lorraine,  in  the  Pinakothek,  Munich, 


observation;  it  is  passive  pleasure  and  per- 
petual benefit.  Happier  than  critic  or 
painter,  the  rest  of  mankind  need  only  enjoy 
what  these  have  to  investigate  and  remem- 
ber." —  P.  G.  Hamerton,  "Thoughts  about 
Art,'"  pp.  777,  211. 


A^IUAL    PERSPECTIVE. (10) 
"Why  the  Atmosphere  Must   Be 
Represented     as     Paler    towards 
the  Lower  Portion.— Because  the 

atmosphere  is  dense  near  the  earth,  and  the 
higher  it  is  the  rarer  it  becomes.  When 
the  sun  is  in  the  east  if  you  look  towards  the 
west  and  a  little  way  to  the  south  and  north, 
you  will  see  that  this  dense  atmosphere 
receives  more  light  from  the  sun  than  the 
rarer;  because  the  rays  meet  with  greater 
resistance.  And  if  the  sky,  as  you  see  it, 
ends  on  a  low  plain,  that  lowest  portion  of 
the  sky  will  be  seen  through  a  denser  and 


whiter  atmosphere,  which  will  weaken  its 
true  color  as  seen  through  that  medium,  and 
there  the  sky  will  look  whiter  than  it  is 
above  you,  where  the  line  of  sight  travels 
through  a  smaller  space  of  air  charged  with 
heavy  vapor.  And  if  you  turn  to  the  east, 
the  atmosphere  will  appear  darker  as  you 
look  lower  down,  because  the  luminous  rays 
pass  less  freely  through  the  lower  atmos- 
phere."— J.  P.  RicJiter,  "The  Literary 
Works  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci, "  I,  p.  160. 

"Of  the  Mode  of  Treating  Remote  Objects 
in  Painting. — It  is  easy  to  perceive  that  the 
atmosphere  which  lies  closest  to  the  level 
ground  is  denser  than  the  rest,  and  that 
where  it  is  higher  up  it  is  rarer  and  more 
transparent.  The  lower  portions  of  large 
and  lofty  objects  which  are  at  a  distance  are 
not  much  seen,  because  you  see  them  along 
a  line  which  passes  through  a  denser  and 
thicker  section  of  the  atmosphere.  The 
summits  of  such  heights  are  seen  along  a 
line  which,  though  it  starts  from  your  eye 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


107 


in  a  dense  atmosphere,  still,  as  it  ends  at  the 
top  of  those  lofty  objects,  ceases  in  a  much 
rarer  atmosphere  than  exists  at  their  base ; 
for  this  reason  the  farther  this  line  extends 
from  your  eye,  from  point  to  point,  the 
atmosphere  becomes  more  and  more  rare. 
Hence,  O  Painter!  when  you  represent 
mountains,  see  that  from  hill  to  hill  the 
bases  are  paler  than  the  summits,  and  in 
proportion  as  they  recede  beyond  each  other 
make  the  bases  paler  than  the  summits; 
while,  the  higher  they  are  the  more  you 
must  show  of  their  true  form  and  color. ' ' — 
Ibid.-,  p.  1 60. 

"Of  the  Color  of  the  Atmosphere. — Expe- 
rience shows  us  that  the  air  must  have  dark- 
ness beyond  it  and  yet  it  appears  blue.  If 
you  produce  a  small  quantity  of  smoke  from 
dry  wood  and  the  rays  of  the  sun  fall  on  this 
smoke,  and  if  you  then  place  behind  the 
smoke  a  piece  of  black  velvet  on  which  the 
sun  does  not  shine,  you  will  see  that  all 
the  smoke  which  is  between  the  eye  and 
the  black  stuff  will  appear  of  a  beautiful 
blue  color.  And  if  instead  of  the  velvet  you 
place  a  white  cloth,  smoke,  that  is,  too  thick 
smoke,  hinders,  and  too  thin  smoke  does  not 
produce,  the  perfection  of  this  blue  color. 
Hence  a  moderate  amount  of  smoke  produces 
the  finest  blue.  Water  violently  ejected  in 
a  fine  spray  and  in  a  dark  chamber  where 
the  sunbeams  are  admitted  produces  these 
blue  rays,  and  the  more  vividly  if  it  is  dis- 
tilled water,  and  thin  smoke  looks  blue. 
This  I  mention  in  order  to  show  that  the 
blueness  of  the  atmosphere  is  caused  by  the 
darkness  beyond  it,  and  these  instances  are 
given  for  those  who  cannot  confirm  [on]  my 
experience  on  Monboso. 

"The  atmosphere,  when  full  of  mist,  is 
quite  devoid  of  blueness,  and  only  appears 
of  the  color  of  clouds,  which  shine  white 
when  the  weather  is  fine.  And  the  more 
you  turn  to  the  west  the  darker  it  will  be, 
and  the  brighter  as  you  look  to  the  east. 
And  the  verdure  of  the  fields  is  bluish  in  a 
thin  mist,  but  grows  gray  in  a  dense  one. 

"The  buildings  in  the  west  will  only  show 
their  illuminated  side,  where  the  sun  shines, 
and  the  mist  hides  the  rest.  When  the  sun 
rises  and  chases  away  the  haze,  the  hills  on 
the  side  where  it  lifts  begin  to  grow  clearer, 


and  look  blue,  and  seem  to  smoke  with  the 
vanishing  mists;  and  the  buildings  reveal 
their  lights  and  shadows;  through  the  thin- 
ner vapor  they  show  only  their  lights,  and 
through  the  thicker  air  nothing  at  all. — 
Ibid.,  p.  i6j,  164. 

After  reading  these  things,  go  back  to 
nature  again.  It  has  perhaps  never  occurred 
to  you  to  notice  that  snow  is  blue  and  not 
white.  Also  that  where  the  light  strikes  it 
is  of  a  different  color  than  in  the  shadows. 
Study  it,  looking  at  both  places  at'  once. 
You  can  see  nothing  as  long  as  you  look  at 
objects  separately.  You  cannot  read,  if  you 
see  words  separately. 

"Atmosphere  must  be  looked  upon  as 
something  in  the  nature  of  a  mist,  a  haze,  or 
a  light  smoke.  The  air  about  us  is  filled 
with  countless  particles  of  matter,  which 
reflect,  break,  and  transmit  waves  of  light 
in  such  a  way  that  when  in  quantity  we  see 
them  as  a  blue  or  a  gray  haze.  Hence  the 
azure  of  the  sky  overhead  and  the  blue-gray 
appearance  that  hangs  about  the  mountains, 
or  in  the  far-away  depths  of  their  valleys. 
This  haze,  though  too  subtile  of  itself  to  be 
seen  at,  say,  one  hundred  yards,  has  a  very 
decided  effect  upon  objects  at  that  distance 
which  may  be  readily  observed.  This  effect 
is,  first,  that  while  the  objects  recede  in  size 
they  also  begin  to  blur  and  waver  in  out- 
line. An  indistinctness  gathers  about  them, 
similar,  though  not  so  strong,  to  the  dim- 
ness which  enshrouds  objects  at  evening 
when  the  light  begins  to  fade. 

"Aside  from  colors  showing  as  patches  of 
light  or  dark  on  the  landscape,  the  interven- 
ing atmosphere  produces  some  changes  in 
their  hues  which  may  be  generally  summar- 
ized by  saying  that  as  they  recede  in  the  dis- 
tance the  light  colors  become  warmer  and 
the  dark  colors  lighter  and  sometimes 
colder.  Thus  at  fifty  yards  a  forest  is  filled 
with  great  patches  of  green,  red,  and  warm 
brown;  but  two  miles  away  its  foliage 
appears  as  a  mass  of  purples,  cold  blues, 
and  grays.  The  weather-beaten  sail  of  a 
fishing-smack  near  at  hand  may  be  gray  in 
color  bat  out  half  a  mile  at  sea  or  farther, 
especially  at  sunrise  or  sunset,  it  changes  to 
a  pale-orange  tone  not  easily  detected 
except  by  the  trained  eye  of  the  painter. 


io8 


REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS 


At  two  hundred  yards'  distance  purplish-red 
turns  to  orange-red,  yellow  becomes  a 
warmer  yellow  bordering  upon  orange, 
ultramarine  first  turns  to  a  purple  and  then 
quickly  dissipates,  and  many  of  the  lighter 
and  more  delicate  hues  are  simply  grayed 
down  by  the  atmosphere  into  neutral  tints. 
"I  am  not  able  to  give  you  any  scientific 
reason  for  these  changes,  nor  state  any  pos- 
itive law  that  will  apply  to  all  colors  alike ; 
but  the  general  rule  of  light  colors  becoming 
warmer,  and  dark  colors  lighter,  and  some- 
times cooler,  will  answer  our  purposes, 
especially  as  we  shall  find  its  recognition 
among  painters,  so  far  as  painters  recognize 
any  rules  whatever." — J.  C.  Van  Dyke,  "Art 
for  Art's  Sake"  pp.  124,  132,  ijj. 


LIGHT,  (n) 
It  is  not  necessary  to  study  this 
work  on  Turnerian  light  in  detail, 
but  it  is  well  to  get  the  idea  of  the 
short  scale  of  the  painter  contrasted  with 
that  of  nature.  It  is  in  consequence  of 
this  fact  that  we  find  it  necessary  to  look 
at  a  picture  a  good  many  seconds  before 
it  begins  to  give  us  the  intention  of  the 
painter  as  regards  light  and  color.  The 
iris  closes  itself  as  much  as  possible  out-of- 
doors.  But  in  looking  at  a  painting  in  the 
house  it  opens  gradually  and  gathers  in  all 
the  light  it  can.  Make  a  practice  of  looking 
at  paintings  and  prints  through  your  hand, 
or  a  roll  of  paper,  framing  out  all  the  light 
except  that  which  comes  from  the  picture. 
"Of  Truth  of  Tone — Now  the  finely-toned 
pictures  of  the  old  masters  are  in  this  respect 
some  of  the  notes  of  nature  played  two  or  three 
octaves  below  her  key;  the  dark  objects  in 
the  middle  distance  having  precisely  the 
same  relation  to  the  light  of  the  sky  which 
they  have  in  nature,  but  the  light  being 
necessarily  infinitely  lowered,  and  the  mass 
of  the  shadow  deepened  in  the  same  degree. 
I  have  often  been  struck,  when  looking  at 
the  image  in  a  camera-obscura  on  a  dark 
day,  with  the  exact  resemblance  it  bore  to 
one  of  the  finest  pictures  of  the  old  masters; 
all  the  foliage  coming  dark  against  the  sky, 
and  nothing  being  seen  in  its  mass  but  here 


and  there  the  isolated  light  of  a  silvery  stem 
or  an  unusually  illumined  cluster  of  leafage. 

"Now  if  this  could  be  done  consistently, 
and  all  the  notes  of  nature  given  in  this  way 
an  octave  or  two  down,  it  would  be  right 
and  necessary  so  to  do ;  but  be  it  observed, 
not  only  does  nature  surpass  us  in  power  of 
obtaining  light  as  much  as  the  sun  surpasses 
white  paper,  but  she  also  infinitely  sur- 
passes us  in  her  power  of  shade.  Her  deep- 
est shades  are  void  spaces  from  which  no  light 
whatever  is  reflected  to  the  eye;  ours  are 
black  surfaces  from  which,  paint  as  black  as 
we  may,  a  great  deal  of  light  is  still  reflected, 
and  which  placed  against  one  of  nature's  bits 
of  gloom  would  tell  as  distinct  light.  Here 
we  are,  then,  with  white  paper  for  our  high- 
est light  and  visible  illumined  surface  for 
our  deepest  shadow,  set  to  run  the  gantlet 
against  nature,  with  the  sun  for  her  light, 
and  vacuity  for  her  gloom.  It  is  evident 
that  she  can  well  afford  to  throw  her  mate- 
rial objects  dark  against  the  brilliant  aerial 
tone  of  her  sky,  and  yet  give  in  those 
objects  themselves  a  thousand  intermediate 
distances  and  tones  before  she  comes  to 
black,  or  to  anything  like  it — all  the  illum- 
ined surfaces  of  her  objects  being  as  dis- 
tinctly and  vividly  brighter  than  her  nearest 
and  darkest  shadows,  as  the  sky  is  brighter 
than  those  illumined  surfaces.  But  if  we, 
against  our  poor  dull  obscurity  of  yellow 
paint,  instead  of  sky,  insist  on  having  the 
same  relation  of  shade  in  material  objects, 
we  go  down  to  the  bottom  of  our  scale  at 
once;  and  what  in  the  world  are  we  to  do 
then? 

"Observe,  I  am  not  at  present  speaking  of 
the  beauty  or  desirableness  of  the  system  of 
the  old  masters;  it  may  be  sublime,  and 
affecting,  and  ideal,  and  intellectual,  and  a 
great  deal  more;  but  all  I  am  concerned 
with  at  present  is,  that  it  is  not  true;  while 
Turner's  is  the  closest  and  most  studied 
approach  to  truth  of  which  the  materials  of 
art  admit" — John  Rnskin,  "Modern  Paint- 
ers," Part  II,  Sec.  2,  Chap,  i,  §§  4.,  5,  8,  10. 

"Of  Turnerian  Light. — Let  us  next  ascer- 
tain what  are  the  colors  of  the  earth  itself. 

"As,  however,  we  pass  to  nearer  objects, 
true  representation  gradually  becomes  pos- 
sible;— to  what  degree  is  always  of  course 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


109 


ascertainable  accurately  by  the  same  mode 
of  experiment.  Bring  the  edge  of  the  paper 
against  the  thing  to  be  drawn,  and  on  that 
edge — as  precisely  as  a  lady  would  match  the 
colors  of  two  pieces  of  a  dress — match  the 
color  of  the  landscape  (with  a  little  opaque 
white  mixed  in  the1  tints  you  use,  so  as  to 
render  it  easy  to  lighten  or  darken  them). 
Take  care  not  to  imitate  the  tint  as  you 
believe  it  to  be,  but  accurately  as  it  is;  so 
that  the  colored  edge  of  the  paper  shall  not 


you  have  painted  it  in  the  colors  of  Turner, 
— in  those  very  colors  which  perhaps  you 
have  been  laughing  at  all  your  life, — the 
fact  being  that  he,  and  he  alone,  of  all  men, 
ever  painted  Nature  in  her  own  colors. 

"  'Well,  but,'  you  will  answer,  impatiently, 
'how  is  it,  if  they  are  the  true  colors,  that 
they  look  so  unnatural?' 

"Because  they  are  not  shown  in  true  con- 
trast to  the  sky,  and  to  other  high  lights. 
Nature  paints  her  shadows  in  pale  purple, 


THE   APPROACH   TO   VENICE. 
By  J.  M.   IV.   Turner.    A  masterpiece  of  high-keyed  light. 


be  discernible  from  the  color  of  the  land- 
scape. You  will  then  find  (if  before  inex- 
perienced) that  shadows  of  trees,  which  you 
thought  were  dark  green  or  black,  are  pale 
violets  and  purples ;  that  lights,  which  you 
thought  were  green,  are  intensely  yellow, 
brown,  or  golden,  and  most  of  them  far  too 
bright  to  be  matched  at  all.  When  you 
have  got  all  the  imitable  hues  truly  matched, 
sketch  the  masses  of  the  landscape  out  com- 
pletely in  those  true  and  ascertained  colors ; 
and  you  will  find,  to  your  amazement,  that 


and  then  raises  her  lights  of  heaven  and 
sunshine  to  such  heights  that  the  pale  pur- 
ple becomes,  by  comparison,  a  vigorous 
dark.  But  poor  Turner  has  no  sun  at  his 
command  to  oppose  his  pale  colors.  He  fol- 
lows Nature  submissively  as  far  as  he  can  ; 
puts  pale  purple  where  she  does,  bright 
gold  where  she  does ;  and  then  when,  on  the 
summit  of  the  slope  of  light,  she  opens  her 
wings  and  quits  the  earth  altogether,  burn- 
ing into  ineffable  sunshine,  what  can  he  do 
but  sit  helpless,  stretching  his  hands  towards 


110 


REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS 


LANDSCAPE    AND    WATER. 
By  Claude  Monet,  a  contemporary  French  luminist  of  the  Turner  type. 


her  in  calm  consent,  as  she  leaves  him  and 
mocks  at  him ! 

"  'Well,  but,'  )Tou  will  further  ask,  'is  this 
right  or  wise?  ought  not  the  contrast  between 
the  masses  to  be  given,  rather  than  the 
actual  hues  of  a  few  parts  of  them,  when 
the  others  are  inimitable?' 

"Yes,  if  this  were  possible,  it  ought  to  be 
done;  but  the  true  contrast  can  never  be 
given.  The  whole  question  is  simply 
whether  you  will  be  false  at  one  side  of  the 
scale  or  at  the  other, — that  is,  whether  you 
will  lose  yourself  in  light  or  in  darkness. 
This  necessity  is  easily  expressible  in  num- 
bers. Suppose  the  utmost  light  you  wish  to 
imitate  is  that  of  serene,  feebly  lighted 
clouds  in  ordinary  sky  (not  sun  or  stars, 
which  it  is,  of  course,  impossible  deceptively 
to  imitate  in  painting  by  any  artifice). 
Then,  suppose  the  degrees  of  shadow 
between  those  clouds  and  Nature's  utmost 


darkness  accurately  measured,  and  divided 
into  a  hundred  degrees  (darkness  being 
zero).  Next  we  measure  our  own  scale, 
calling  our  utmost  possible  black,  zero;  and 
we  shall  be  able  to  keep  parallel  with 
Nature,  perhaps  up  to  as  far  as  her  40 
degrees;  all  above  that  being  whiter  than 
our  white  paper.  Well,  with  our  power  of 
contrast  between  zero  and  40,  we  have  to 
imitate  her  contrasts  between  zero  and  100. 
Now,  if  we  want  true  contrasts,  we  can  first 
set  our  40  to  represent  her  100,  our  20  for 
her  80,  and  our  zero  for  her  60;  everything 
below  her  60  being  lost  in  blackness.  This 
is,  with  certain  modifications,  Rembrandt's 
system.  Or,  secondly,  we  can  put  zero  for 
her  zero,  20  for  her  20,  and  40  for  her  40; 
everything  above  40  being  lost  in  whiteness. 
This  is,  with  certain  modifications,  Paul 
Veronese's  system.  Or,  finally,  we  can  put 
our  zero  for  her  zero,  and  our  40  for  her  100; 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


in 


our  20  for  her  50;  our  30  for  her  75, 
and  our  10  fcr  her  25,  proportioning  the 
intermediate  contrasts  accordingly.  This 
is,  with  certain  modifications^  Turner's  sys- 
tem. 

"The  main  difference  is,  that  with  Leo- 
nardo, Rembrandt  and  Raphael,  vast  masses 
of  the  picture  are  lost  in  comparatively  color- 
less (dark  gray  or  brown)  shadow;  these 
painters  beginning  with  the  lights,  and  going 
down  to  blackness;  but  with  Veronese, 
Titian,  and  Turner,  the  whole  picture  is  like 
the  rose, — glowing  with  color  in  the  shad- 
ows, and  rising  into  paler  and  more  delicate 
hues,  or  masses  of  whiteness,  in  the  lights; 
they  having  begun  with  the  shadows,  and 
gone  up  to  whiteness." — John  Ruskin, 
"Modern  Painters"  Part  V,  Chap.  Ill, 
§§  8-u. 

"Manet's  great  distinction  is  to  have  dis- 
covered that  the  sense  of  reality  is  achieved 
with  a  thousand-fold  greater  intensity  by 
getting  as  near  as  possible  to  the  actual, 
rather  than  resting  content  with  the  relative, 
value  of  every  detail.  Every  one  who  has 
painted  since  Manet  has  either  followed  him 
in  this  effort  or  has  appeared  jejune. 

"And  it  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the 
way  in  which  the  sense  of  reality  has  been 
intensified  by  Manet's  insistence  upon  get- 
ting as  near  as  possible  to  the  individual 
values  of  objects  as  they  are  seen  in  nature 
—in  spite  of  his  abandonment  of  the 
practice  of  painting  on  a  parallel  scale. 
Things  now  drop  into  their  true  place, 
look  as  they  really  do,  and  count  as  they 
count  in  nature,  because  the  painter  is 
no  longer  content  with  giving  us  change 
for  nature,  but  tries  his  best  to  give  us 
nature  itself. 

"Applying  Manet's  method,  his  invention, 
his  discovery,  to  the  painting  of  out-of-doors, 
the  plein  air  school  immediately  began  to 
produce  landscapes  of  astonishing  reality  by 
confining  their  effort  to  those  values  which 
it  is  in  the  power  of  pigments  to  imi- 
tate. The  possible  scale  of  mere  corre- 
spondence being  of  course  from  one  to  one 
hundred,  they  secured  greater  truth  by 
painting  between  twenty  and  eighty,  we 
may  say."  —  IV.  C.  Broivnell,  "-French  Art,"' 

pp.    120,    122,    123. 


V 


ALUES   AND    REFLECTIONS. 
(12) 


Any  one  who  has  understood  the 
foregoing  passages  will  also  under- 
stand what  the  painter  means  by  values. 
The  eye  is  able  to  perceive  about  twenty 
steps  only  between  blackest  ink  and  whitest 
paper  (not  one  hundred,  as  Ruskin  and 
Hamerton  suggest).  Thus  we  have  twenty 
notes  or  "values"  to  use  in  representing 
nature's  almost  infinite  range.  It  is  one 
of  the  greatest  difficulties  in  painting  to  "get 
the  values";  to  manage  so  that  the  lightest 
thing  seen  in  nature  will  be  the  lightest  on 
the  canvas,  the  darkest  thing  the  darkest,  etc. , 
all  in  perfect  relation.  This  is  the  elemen- 
tary basis  of  values.  To  comprehend  what 
color-values  are  is  more  difficult,  and  had 
best  not  be  attempted  at  the  present  stage. 

Everybody  loves  reflections  in  water. 
But  as  our  powers  of  vision  become  stronger 
we  find  other  reflections.  Everything  we  see 
is  a  mirror.  Each  thing  in  its  own  degree 
is  trying  to  reflect  the  light  that  falls  on  it. 
Look  at  the  grass  in  sunlight.  Each  sep- 
arate stem  of  grass  reflects  the  sun  as  best  it 
can  (especially  on  the  curve  of  the  stem), 
and  it  does  pretty  well  too.  Now  look  at 
grass  in  the  shade.  It  cannot  reflect  sun- 
light, but  it  chooses  the  next  strongest  light. 
If  you  look  for  some  time,  patiently,  you 
will  begin-  to  see  bright  flecks  of  sky-bluish 
quality  on  the  turn  of  each  spear.  In  a 
whole  field  of  grass  in  shadow  this  would  be 
felt  (rather  than  seen)  as  a  distinct  bluish 
bloom.  Learn  to  see  the  sky  in  the  ground! 
A  good  painter  will  suggest  this  finely. 
Wherever  possible  you  must  supplement 
your  nature-study  with  looking  at  similar 
effects  in  painting.  Thus  the  painter  will 
help  you,  "lending  his  mind  out." 

Notice  reflections  everywhere.  A  white 
house  in  sunlight  on  a  green  lawn  will  be 
full  of  reflected  green  lights.  You  may  see 
them  clear  up  under  the  eaves.  Notice  also 
the  difference  in  the  color  of  grass  in  light 
and  grass  in  shadow.  One  is  distinctly  yel- 
lowish; the  other  bluish  in  comparison.  In 
looking  for  these  effects  be  careful  not  to 
look  at  one  thing  at  a  time.  Look  at  sev- 
eral parts  of  the  "picture"  together.  This 


112 


REPRESENTA  TIVE  JUDGMENTS 


is  the  great  difference  between  the  painter's 
way  of  looking  and  the  layman's.  The 
painter  sees  colors  in  relation. 

"Phenomena  of  Distant  Color. — It  is  per- 
haps one  of  the  most  difficult  lessons  to 
learn  in  art,  that  the  warm  colors  of  dis- 
tance, even  the  most  glowing,  are  subdued 
by  the  air  so  as  in  no  wise  to  resemble  the 
same  color  seen  on  a  foreground  object;  so 
that  the  rose  of  sunset  on  clouds  or  moun- 


I'ATERNAL   ADVICE. 

By  C.    lerburg  in    the   Berlin   Museum.    Like  Rembrandt,  one  of  his   masters,   Terburg 
loses  the  lower  values  in  masses  of  shadow. 


termixtuie  and  undercurrent  of  warm 
color  .  .  .  ;  and  so  of  every  bright  dis- 
tant color;  while  in  foregrounds  where 
colors  may  be,  and  ought  to  be,  pure, 
yet  that  any  of  them  are  expressive  of 
light  is  only  to  be  felt  where  there  is 
the  accurate  fitting  of  them  to  their  rel- 
ative shadows."  — Jo/in  Ruskin,  "Mo- 
dern Painters,"  Part  //,  Sec.  /,  Chap. 
7,  §  21. 

TONE."  (13) 
Tone  is  anoth- 
er  quality 
which  is  easier 
to  feel  than  define. 
Tone  results  from  a 
perfect  harmony  of  the 
parts  of  the  picture, 
perfect  light  and  shade 
relations,  perfect  har- 
mony of  color.  But 
tone  seems  to  carry  a 
further  thought.  It  is 
the  unity  of  the  pre- 
vailing color  mood  of 
the  picture.  You  may 
look  out  of  your  win- 
dow and  you  will  find 
a  certain  kind  of  day. 
It  is  a  gray  or  blue,  or 
perhaps  a  salmon-col- 
ored day  (or  hour  of  the 
day).  You  feel  this 
quality  in  everything. 
Each  object  emerges 
from  it  but  partially. 


tains  has  a  gray  in  it  which  distinguishes 
it  from  the  rose  color  of  the  leaf  of  a 
flower;  and  the  mingling  of  this  gray  of 
distance  without  in  the  slightest  degree 
taking  away  the  expression  of  the  intense 
and  perfect  purity  of  the  color  in  and  by 
itself,  is  perhaps  the  last  attainment  of  the 
great  landscape  colorist.  In  the  same  way 
the  blue  of  distance,  however  intense,  is 
not  the  blue  of  a  bright  blue  flower,  and  it 
is  not  distinguished  from  it  by  different 
texture  merely,  but  by  a  certain  in- 


But  to  see  this  you 
must  view  things  stead- 
ily and  view  them  whole.  The  individuality 
of  the  colors  of  objects  is  not  lost  but  modified 
and  unified.  When  this  is  perfectly  accom- 
plished in  painting  we  have  the  quality  of 
tone.  Rembrandt  is  a  great  master  of  tone. 
And  so,  at  their  best,  are  Cazin  and  Claude 
Monet.  Cazin  is  very  delicate  and  subtle. 
Monet  is  brilliant  and  subtle.  Both  possess 
this  high  unity  of  color  and  value. 

"Of  Truth  of  Tone.— I  understand  two 
things  by  the  word  Tone;  first,  the  exact 
relief  and  relation  of  objects  against  and  to 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


each  other  in  substance  and  darkness,  as 
they  are  nearer  or  more  distant,  and  the  per- 
fect relation  of  the  shades  of  all  of  them  to 
the  chief  light  of  the  picture,  whether  that 
be  sky,  water,  or  anything  else ;  secondly, 
the  exact  relation  of  the  colors  of  the  shad- 
ows to  the  colors  of  the  lights,  so  that  they 
may  be  at  once  felt  to  be  merely  different 
degrees  of  the  same  light;  and  the  accurate 
relation  among  the  illuminated  parts  them- 
selves, with  respect  to  the  degree  in  which 
they  are  influenced  by  the  color  of  the  light 
itself,  whether  warm  or  cold;  so  that  the 
whole  of  the  picture  (or,  where  several 
tones  are  united,  those  parts  of  it  which  are 
under  each)  may  be  felt  to  be  in  one  climate, 
under  one  kind  of  light,  and  in  one  kind  of 
atmosphere;  this  being  chiefly  dependent 
on  that  peculiar  and  inexplicable  quality  of 
each  color  laid  on,  which  makes  the  eye  feel 
both  what  is  the  actual  color  of  the  object 
represented,  and  that  it  is  raised  to  its 
apparent  pitch  by  illumination.  A  very 
bright  brown,  for  instance,  out  of  sunshine 
may  be  precisely  of  the  same  shade  as  a 
very  dead  or  cold  brown  in  sunshine,  but  it 
will  be  totally  different  in  quality;  and  that 
quality  by  which  the  illuminated  dead  color 
would  be  felt  in  nature  different  from  the 
unilluminated  bright  one,  is  what  artists  are 
perpetually  aiming  at,  and  connoisseurs 
talking  nonsense  about,  under  the  name  of 
'tone.'  The  want  of  tone  in  pictures  is 
caused  by  objects  looking  bright  in  their 
own  positive  hue,  and  not  by  illumination, 
and  by  the  consequent  want  of  sensation  of 
the  raising  of  their  hues  by  light." — Jo/in 
Ruskin,  "Modern  Painters,"  Part  2,  Sec.  2, 
Chap.  /,  §  i. 

"Dark  and  Light  Composition. —  It  has 
already  been  stated  that  beauty  in  painting 
is  manifested  in  three  ways,  namely,  by 
Line,  Dark-and-Light,  Color.  We  have  now 
to  consider  the  second  of  these  elements, 
Dark-and-Light.  There  is  no  one  word  in 
English  comprehensive  enough  to  express 
what  is  here  meant  by  this  hyphened  phrase, 
but  as  the  Japanese  have  brought  so  much 
of  this  kind  of  beauty  to  our  art  we  may  well 
use  their  word  for  it,  notan.  Besides,  the 
adoption  of  a  single  word,  and  a  new  one, 
serves  to  emphasize  our  characterization  of 


MODERN   JAPANESE    KAKEMONO    (SCROLL    PICTURE). 

The  original  also  is  in  various  notan.     The  subjects  are  lotus 
and  stork. 


it  as  a  great  aesthetic  element.  Thus  the 
notan  of  a  pattern  or  a  picture  is  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  dark  and  light  masses.  Artists 
often  employ  the  word  'spotting'  in  this 
sense,  and  sometimes  the  more  indefinite 


n6 


REPRESENTA  TIVE  JUDGMENTS 


woid  'effect,'  while  'wash-out'  designates  in 
studio  slang  the  lack  of  this  element, 

"The  Orientals,  who  have  never  consid- 
ered the  representation  of  shadows  as  of  seri- 
ous importance,  have  recognized  notan  as  a 
special  and  vital  part  of  the  art  of  painting, 
to  be  studied  for  its  own  sake,  a  field  for 
creative  activity  entirely  distinct  from  Line 


PALAZZO    CA      DORO    IN    VENICE. 
An  example  of  elaborate  notan  in  architecture. 


and  Color.  Some  of  their  schools  discarded 
color,  and  for  ages  painted  in  ink,  so  master- 
ing notan  as  to  attract  the  admiration,  and 
profoundly  influence  the  art  of  the  western 
world. 

"Yet  so  firmly  is  our  art  embedded  in  the 
traditions  of  the  nature-imitators,  that  Dark- 
and-Light  is  not  considered  in  school  curric- 
ula, except  in  its  limited  application  to  the 
representation  of  things.  The  study  of 
'light  and  shade'  has  for  its  aim,  not  the 
creation  of  a  beautiful  idea  in  terms  of  con- 
trasting masses  of  light  and  dark,  but 
merely  the  accurate  rendering  of  certain 
facts  of  nature, — hence  is  a  scientific  rather 
than  an  artistic  exercise.  The  pupil  who 
begins  in  this  way  will  be  embarrassed  in 
advanced  work  by  lack  of  experience  in 
arranging  and  differentiating  tones.  Worse 
than  that,  it  tends  to  cut  him  off  from  the 
appreciation  of  one  whole  class  of  great 
works  of  art.  As  in  the  case  of  Line,  so 


again  in  this  is  manifest  the  narrowness  and 
weakness  of  the  scheme  of  nature-imitating 
as  a  foundation  for  art  education.  The 
Realistic  standard  has  tended,  and  ever  will 
tend,  to  the  decay  of  art. 

"To  attain  an  appreciation  of  notan,  and 
power  to  create  with  it,  the  following  fun- 
damental fact  must  be  understood,  namely, 
that  a  placing  together  of 
masses  of  dark  and  light,  syn- 
thetically related,  conveys  to 
the  eye  an  impression  of  beauty 
entirely  independent  of  mean- 
ing. For  example,  squares  of 
dark  porphyry  against  squares 
of  light  marble,  checks  in 
printed  cloth,  and  blotty  ink 
sketches  by  the  Venetians,  the 
Dutch,  and  the  Japanese. 

"When  this  occurs  accident- 
ally in  nature,  as  in  the  case 
of  a  grove  of  dark  trees  against 
a  light  hillside,  or  a  pile  of 
dark  buildings  against  a  twi- 
light sky,  we  at  once  perceive 
its  beauty,  and  say  that  the 
scene  is  'picturesque.'  This 
quality,  which  makes  the  nat- 
ural scene  a  good  subject  for 
a  picture,  is  analogous  to  music. 
Truthful  drawing  and  'conscientiousness' 
would  have  nothing  to  do  with  an  artist's 


JAPANESE   EXAMPLE   OF   NOTAN. 
From  Daw's  "Composition,'"  by  courtesy  of  Baker  &  Taylor  Co. 

rendering  of  this.  This  is  the  kind  of 
'visual  music'  which  the  Japanese  so  love 
in  the  rough  ink  painting  of  their  old  mas- 
ters, where  there  is  but  a  mere  hint  of 
facts. 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


117 


"Claude  Lorraine  and  Corot,  in  the  West, 
Kakei  and  Sesshu  in  the  East,  owe  the  light 
of  their  skies  and  the  mystery  of  their 
groves  to  an  appreciation  of  the  refinements 
of  notan.  The  etchers,  the  illustrators,  and 
the  practical  designers  are  equally  depend- 
ent upon  it." — A.  W.  Dow,  "Composition," 
PP-  36,  37- 


M 


YSTERY   OR   INFINITY.  (14) 


"Of    Infinity,    or    the    Type    of 
Divine      Incomprehensibility.  — 

For  there  was  never  yet  a  child  of 
any  promise  (so  far  as  the  Theoretic  facul- 
ties are  concerned)  but  awaked  to  the  sense 
of  beauty  with  the  first  gleam  of  reason; 
and  I  suppose  there  are  few  among  those 
who  love  Nature  otherwise  than  by  profes- 
sion and  at  second-hand,  who  look  not  back 
to  their  youngest  and  least  learned  days  as 
those  of  the  most  intense,  superstitious, 
insatiable,  and  beatific  perception  of  her 
splendors 

"It  is  not,  then,  by  the  nobler  form,  it  is 
not  by  positiveness  of  hue,  it  is  not  by 
intensity  of  light  (for  the  sun  itself  at  noon- 
day is  effectless  upon  the  feelings),  that  this 
strange  distant  space  possesses  its  attractive 
power.  But  there  is  one  thing  that  it  has, 
or  suggests,  which  no  other  object  of  sight 
suggests  in  equal  degree,  and  that  is — Infin- 
ity. It  is  of  all  visible  things  the  least 
material,  the  least  finite,  the  farthest  with- 
drawn from  the  earth  prison-house,  the  most 
typical  of  the  nature  of  God ;  the  most  sug- 
gestive of  the  glory  of  His  dwelling-place. 
For  the  sky  of  night,  though  we  may  know 
it  boundless,  is  dark ;  it  is  a  studded  vault,  a 
roof  that  seems  to  shut  us  in  and  down :  but 
the  bright  distance  has  no  limit,  we  feel  its 
infinity,  as  we  rejoice  in  its  purity  of  light. 

"The  absolute  necessity,  for  such  I  indeed 
consider  it,  is  of  no  more  than  such  a  mere 
luminous  distant  point  as  may  give  to  the 
feelings  a  species  of  escape  from  all  the 
finite  objects  about  them.  There  is  a  spec- 
tral etching  of  Rembrandt,  a  Presentation  of 
Christ  in  the  Temple,  where  the  figure  of  a 
robed  priest  stands  glaring  by  its  gems  out 
of  the  gloom,  holding  a  crosier.  Behind  it 


there  is  a  subdued  window-light,  seen  in 
the  opening  between  two  columns,  without 
which  the  impressiveness  of  the  whole  sub- 
ject would,  I  think,  be  incalculably  brought 
down.  .1  cannot  tell  whether  I  am  at  present 
allowing  too  much  weight  to  my  fancies  and 
predilections,  but  without  so  much  escape 
into  the  outer  air  and  open  heaven  as  this, 
I  can  take  permanent  pleasure  in  no  pic- 
ture. " — Jo  Jin  Ruskin,  "Modern  Painters," 
Part  III,  Sec.  I,  Chap.  5,  §§  2-7. 

"Of  Turnerian  Mystery. — We  never  see 
anything  clearly.  I  stated  this  fact  partly 
in  the  chapter  on  Truth  of  Space,  in  the  first 
volume,  but  not  with  sufficient  illustration, 
so  that  the  reader  might  by  that  chapter 
have  been  led  to  infer  that  the  mystery 
spoken  of  belonged  to  some  special  distance 
of  the  landscape,  whereas  the  fact  is,  that 
everything  we  look  at,  be  it  large  or  small, 
near  or  distant,  has  an  equal  quantity  of 
mystery  in  it;  and  the  only  question  is,  not 
how  much  mystery  there  is,  but  at  what  part 
of  the  object  mystification  begins.  We  sup- 
pose we  see  the  ground  under  oar  feet 
clearly,  but  if  we  try  to  number  its  grains  of 
dust,  we  shall  find  that  it  is  as  full  of  con- 
fusion and  doubtful  form  as  anything  else ; 
so  that  there  is  literally  no  point  of  clear 
sight,  and  there  never  can  be.  What  we  call 
seeing  a  thing  clearly,  is  only  seeing  enough 
of  it  to  make  out  what  it  is. 

"Take  the  commonest,  closest,  most  famil- 
iar thing,  and  strive  to  draw  it  verily  as  you 
see  it.  Be  sure  of  this  last  fact,  for  other- 
wise you  will  find  yourself  continually  draw- 
ing, not  what  you  see,  but  what  you  know. 
The  best  practice  to  begin  with  is,  sitting 
about  three  yards  from  a  bookcase  (not  your 
own,  so  that  you  may  know  none  of  the 
titles  of  the  books),  to  try  to  draw  the  books 
accurately,  with  the  titles  on  the  backs,  and 
patterns  on  the  bindings,  as  you  see  them. 
You  are  not  to  stir  from  your  place  to  look 
what  they  are,  but  draw  them  simply  as 
they  appear,  giving  the  perfect  look  of  neat 
lettering;  which,  nevertheless,  must  be  (as 
you  find  it  on  most  of  the  books)  absolutely 
illegible. 

"Keeping  to  that  question,  why  is  it  that  a 
photograph  always  looks  clear  and  sharp, — 
not  at  all  like  a  Turner? 


n8 


REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS 


"Photographs  never  look  entirely  clear 
and  sharp ;  but  because  clearness  is  supposed 
a  merit  in  them,  they  are  usually  taken  from 
very  clearly-marked  and  un-Turnerian  sub- 
jects; and  such  results  as  are  misty  and 
faint,  though  often  precisely  those  which 
contain  the  most  subtle  renderings  of  nature, 
are  thrown  away,  and  the  clear  ones  only  are 
preserved.  Those  clear  ones  depend  for 
much  of  their  force  on  the  faults  of  the  proc- 
ess. Photography  either  exaggerates  shad- 
ows, or  loses  detail  in  the  lights,  and,  in 
many  ways  which  I  do  not  here  pause  to 
explain,  misses  certain  of  the  utmost  sub- 
tleties of  natural  effect  (which  are  often  the 
things  that  Turner  has  chiefly  aimed  at), 
while  it  renders  subtleties  of  form  which 
no  human  hand  could  achieve.  But  a  deli- 
cately taken  photograph  of  a  truly  Turnerian 
subject,  is  far  more  like  Turner  in  the  draw- 
ing than  it  is  to  the  work  of  any  other  artist; 
though,  in  the  system  of  chiaroscuro,  being 
entirely  and  necessarily  Rembrandtesque, 


the  subtle  mystery  of  the  touch  (Turnerism 
carried  to  an  infinitely  wrought  refinement) 
is  not  usually  perceived. 

"Not  only,  however,  does  this  take  place 
in  a  picture  very  notably,  so  that  a  group  of 
touches  will  tell  as  a  compact  and  intelligi- 
ble mass,  a  little  way  off,  though  confused 
when  seen  near,  but  also  a  dark  touch  gains 
at  a  distance  in  apparent  darkness,  a  light 
touch  in  apparent  light,  and  a  colored  touch 
in  apparent  color,  to  a  degree  inconceivable 
by  an  unpracticed  person;  so  that  literally, 
a  good  painter  is  obliged,  working  near  his 
picture,  to  do  everything  only  about  half  of 
what  he  wants,  the  rest  being  done  by  the 
distance.  And  if  the  effect,  at  such  a  dis- 
tance, is  to  be  of  confusion,  then  sometimes, 
seen  near,  the  work  must  be  a  confusion 
worse  confounded,  almost  utterly  unintel- 
ligible: hence  the  amazement  and  blank 
wonder  of  the  public  at  some  of  the  finest 
passages  of  Turner,  which  look  like  a  mere 
meaningless  and  disorderly  work  of  chance  : 


•  THE    FIGHTING    TEMERAIRE. 

By  J.  M.   W.  Turner,  in  the  National  Gallery,  London. 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


119 


but,  rightly  understood,  are  preparations 
for  a  given  result,  like  the  most  subtle 
moves  of  a  game  of  chess,  of  which  no 
bystander  can  for  a  long  time  see  the  inten- 
tion, but  which  are,  in  dim,  underhand, 
wonderful  way,  bringing  out  their  foreseen 
and  inevitable  result. 

"And,  be  it  observed,  no  other  means 
would  have  brought  out  that  result.  Every 
distance  and  size  of  picture  has  its  own 
proper  method  of  work;  the  artist  will 
necessarily  vary  that  method  somewhat 
according  to  circumstances  and  expecta- 
tions :  to  please  his  patron  or  catch  the  pub- 
lic eye ;  and  sometimes  be  tempted  into  such 
finish  by  his  zeal,  or  betrayed  into  it  by 
forgetfulness,  as  I  think  Tintoret  has  been, 
slightly,  in  his  Paradise,  above  mentioned. 
But  there  never  yet  was  a  picture  thoroughly 
effective  at  a  distance,  which  did  not  look  more 
or  less  unintelligible  near.  Things  which 
in  distant  effect  are  folds  of  dress  seen  near 
are  only  two  or  three  grains  of  golden  color 
set  there  apparently  by  chance ;  what  far  off 
is  a  solid  limb,  near,  is  a  gray  shade  with  a 
misty  outline,  so  broken  that  it  is  not  easy 
to  find  its  boundary;  and  what  far  off  may 
perhaps  be  a  man's  face,  near  is  only  a  piece 
of  thin  brown  color,  enclosed  by  a  single 
flowing  wave  of  a  brush  loaded  with  white, 
while  three  brown  touches  across  one  edge 
of  it,  ten  feet  away,  become  a  mouth  and 
eyes.  The  more  subtle  the  power  of  the 
artist  the  more  curious  the  difference  will  be 
between  the  apparent  means  and  the  effect 
produced :  and  one  of  the  most  sublime  feel- 
ings connected  with  art  consists  in  the  per- 
ception of  this  very  strangeness,  and  in  a 
sympathy  with  the  foreseeing  and  fore- 
ordaining power  of  the  artist.  In  Turner, 
Tintoret,  and  Paul  Veronese,  the  intense- 
ness  of  perception,  first,  as  to  what  is  to  be 
done,  and  then,  of  the  means  of  doing  it,  is 
so  colossal,  that  I  always  feel  in  the  pres- 
ence of  their  pictures  just  as  other  people 
would  in  that  of  a  supernatural  being. 
Common  talkers  use  the  word  'magic'  of  a 
great  painter's  power  without  knowing  what 
they  mean  by  it.  They  mean  a  great  truth. 
That  power  is  magical;  so  magical,  that, 
well  understood,  no  enchanter's  work  could 
be  more  miraculous  or  more  appalling;  and 


though  I  am  not  often  kept  from  saying 
things  from  timidity,  I  should  be  afraid  of 
offending  the  reader,  if  I  were  to  define  to 
him  accurately  the  kind  and  degree  of  awe, 
with  which  I  have  stood  before  Tintoret's 
Adoration  of  the  Magi,  at  Venice,  and 
Veronese's  Marriage  in  Cana,  in  the 
Louvre." — JoJm  Ruskin,  "Modern  Painters," 
Part  F,  Chap.  4,  §§  4,  7,  //,  13-15. 


1 1FFECT   AND    BREADTH.  (15) 


^ 


"Every  scene  in  the  world  has  its 
*  ^  favorable  or  unfavorable  effects — 
the  effects  that  are  specially  suita- 
ble or  unsuitable  to  that  particular  scene. 
Under  the  most  favorable  it  seems  like 
a  revelation,  but  when  the  effect  is  not 
so  well  adapted  to  the  particular  scene 
(however  perfectly  it  might  have  suited 
others),  then  the  power  of  the  landscape 
over  our  minds  is  reduced  to  its  lowest 
degree. 

"This  depends  upon  a  union  of  the  forms 
of  the  earth  with  cloud  forms,  and  on  the 
display  of  both  under  the  light  that  gives 
them  the  most  perfect  unity,  and  brings  the 
finest  features  of  the  landscape  into  the 
most  distinct  relief,  whilst  reducing  all  thai 
is  commonplace  to  a  subordinate  position. 
It  is  evident  that  such  perfectly  favorable 
effects  are  likely  to  be  rare,  but  they  do 
occur,  and  the  business  of  the  imaginative 
artist  is  either  to  seize  upon  them  when 
they  occur,  or  imagine  them  in  their 
absence. 

"The  reader  is  well  aware  that  effect  is 
the  supreme  power  in  landscape  painting, 
that  it  arouses  or  soothes  the  feelings  like 
music,  that  it  ennobles  the  humblest  materi- 
als, and  adds  grandeur  and  dignity  to  the 
grandest  and  most  noble.  Without  effect 
the  finest  landscapes  in  nature  have  but 
little  power  on  the  mind;  aided  by  beautiful 
or  impressive  effects  the  poorest  subjects 
become  pictures.  This  being  so  it  is  not 
surprising  that  all  the  most  imaginative 
landscape  painters  have  looked  to  effect  as 
the  secret  of  their  power  over  their  fellow- 
men,  and  that  their  imaginations  have  been 
exercised  far  more  in  the  creation  or  selec- 


I2O 


REPRESENTATIVE  JUDGMENTS 


tion  of  effects  than  in  the  portrayal  of  tangi- 
ble and  measurable  things. 

"Look  at  Wilson,  for  example,  what 
infinite  calm  there  is  in  his  quiet  Italian 
afternoon  or  evening  scenes!  There  are  no 
landscapes  more  tranquilizing  if  we  enjoy 
them  in  the  right  spirit;  that  is,  if  we 
quietly  accept  their  influence  without  setting 
up  tiresome  critical  objections."  -P.  G. 
Hamerton,  "Imagination  in  Landscape  Paint- 
ing," pp.  216,  222,  224. 

"Breadth. — The   artistic   term  'breadth, 
so  commonly  used  in   the   criticism   of  the 
arts  of  form,  may  claim  a  word  of  comment 


of  the  figures  on  foot  are  kept  on  much  the 
same  level,  the  dress  and  accoutrements  of 
the  figures  admit  of  only  enough  variety  to 
avoid  monotony  or  emptiness,  the  relief  is 
low  and  the  surface  offers  but  slight  con- 
trasts of  light-and-shade.  Claude  of  Lor- 
raine's landscapes  are  pre-eminently  'broad, ' 
for  the  objects  he  depicts  are  in  themselves 
uninteresting,  and  appear  time  after  time 
on  his  canvases  without  much  variation, 
while  on  the  other  hand  his  apprehension  of 
the  charm  of  vast  open  spaces  of  earth  and 
sky,  bathed  in  atmosphere,  is  singularly 
intense  and  poetical." — G.  B.  Brown,  "The 
Fine  Arts,"  §  7/7.  (A 
reproduction  of  part  of 
this  Elgin  Frieze,  orig- 
inally on  the  Parthenon, 
Athens,  may  be  found 
on  p.  30.  The  repro- 
duction on  this  page  is 
from  another  part  of 
the  same  frieze.) 


s 


ENTIMENT. 
(16) 


POSEIDON,    APOI.LO,    AND    ATHENE    OR    ARTEMIS. 
From  the  frieze  of  the  Parthenon,  Athens,  now  in  the  Acropolis  Museum,  Athens. 


here.  It  is  said  of  a  facade,  a  sculptured 
frieze,  a  picture,  that  it  is  'broadly  treated' 
or  has  'breadth'  when  the  parts  are  in  such 
due  subordination  that  the  single  harmoni- 
ous effect  is  predominant.  Thus  the  East- 
ern or  entrance  fagade  of  the  University  at 
Edinburgh,  a  masterpiece  by  Robert  Adam, 
has  'breadth'  in  virtue  of  its  massive  sim- 
plicity, the  largeness  of  the  parts  which 
make  it  up,  and  the  severe  restraint  of  the 
ornamentation.  The  same  quality  belongs 
to  the  Elgin  Frieze  because  the  constituent 
elements  in  the  procession  are  few  and  sim- 
ple, the  lines  of  the  heads  of  the  riders  and 


We  have  inti- 
mated that 
beauty  was  a  sufficient 
achievement  in  art.  We 
would  not  complain  of 
an  artist  who  is  great 
enough  to  produce  that. 
But  many  of  our  little 
painters  seem  to  be 
afraid  that  they  may 

manage  to  express  a  sentiment  or  an  idea. 
There  are  notable  painters  who  have  said 
that  the  province  of  art  is  the  expression 
of  form  and  color  ideas,  just  as  music  is 
the  expression  of  order  in  sounds.  But 
there  are  great  masters  also  who  have  used 
form  and  color  as  a  language  expressing 
other  thoughts. 

"The  Language  of  Art. — The  painter  who 
can  accomplish  this  has  learned  to  use  the 
'language  of  Art.'  'Art  is  a  language,' 
exclaimed  Jean  Francois  Millet,  'and  lan- 
guage is  made  to  express  thought. '  Now 
the  artist  can  'think'  without  a  process  of 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


121 


reasoning,  and  become  eloquent  without 
using  any  form  of  words.  This  is  true  of 
painting  as  of  the  other  arts.  Alfred  Stev- 
ens says  in  one  place :  'In  the  art  of  painting 
one  must  before  everything  be  a  painter: 
the  thinker  only  comes  in  afterwards, '  but 
in  another:  'A  true  painter  is  a  thinker  all 
the  time.'  He  protests  that  'sparkle  of 
light  thrown  on  an  accessory  by  a  Dutch  or 
Flemish  painter,  is  more  than  a  skillful 
stroke  of  the  brush,  it  is  a  touch  of  mind.' 
Again,  Eugene  Fromentin  —  whose  book 
upon  the  painting  of  the  Low  Countries  is  a 
classic  expression  of  the  best  modern  con- 
clusions about  the  Art — while  of  course 
totally  opposed  to  the  popular  heresy  of 
looking  at  pictures  for  the  literary  interest 
of  their  subjects,  yet  insists  on  painting  as 
a  language  for  the  expression  of  artistic 
thought.  In  a  certain  class  6f  productions, 
he  says,  'every  work  in  which  the  hand 
reveals  itself  with  joyousness  and  brilliancy 
is  by  that  very  fact  a  work  that  belongs  to 
the  brain  and  is  drawn  from  it. '  Again  he 
speaks  'of  the  dramatic  value  of  a  flourish 
and  an  effect,'  and  'the  moral  beauty  of  a 
picturesque  composition.'  In  all  such  cases 
the  'thought'  of  the  work  is  not  merely  a 
literary  idea  taking  for  the  moment  an  artis- 
tic shape,  but  is  on  the  other  hand  an  idea 
formed  and  expressed  from  first  to  last  in  an 
artistic  medium.  It  is  something  so  inti- 
mately bound  up  with  the  expression  that 
the  two  are  really  one,  so  that  the  artistic 
language  may  not  only  express  thought,  but 
actually  be  that  thought.  We  should  be 
able  to  say  of  it,  Such  thought  could  never 
be  expressed  in  other  than  artistic  form. 
Though  possessing  an  intellectual  and  a 
moral  element,  as  created  in  the  imagination 
of  a  thinking  and  feeling  being,  it  does  not 
appeal  to  the  reflective  reason  nor  does  it 
attempt  to  edify.  It  is  only  in  and  through 
art  that  we  can  meet  and  apprehend  it;  if, 
or  in  so  far  as,  we  may  be  able  to  disengage 
the  thought  from  the  expression,  it  is  not 
artistic  thought,  and  is  not  the  proper  con- 
tent for  the  language  of  art. 

"The  'language  of  Art'  has  many  utter- 
ances.    It  will  speak  to  us — 

'  In  solemn  tenor  and  deep  organ  tone  ' 
from  the  Sublime  of  architecture;  with  the 


note  of  law  and  reason  out  of  the  well-knit 
ordered  structure;  in  accents  pregnant  with 
associations  that  gather  round  country  and 
shrine  and  tomb  and  with  all  the  interest  of 
history,  from  the  national  and  religious 
monument.  Through  the  significant  types 
of  sculpture  and  of  ideal  painting,  it  will 
bring  before  us  the  thoughts  and  aspirations 
about  the  Human  and  the  Divine  of  some  of 
the  Master-minds  of  the  ages.  In  portraiture 
the  language  of  Art  will  confide  to  us  the 
secret  of  the  hidden  springs  of  character, 
and  point  out  the  marks  which  the  soul  has 
written  on  the  face  for  only  the  discerning 
eye  to  read.  In  the  human  creature,  and  in 
all  the  organized  beings  and  objects  of 
nature,  it  will  make  clear  to  us — not  the 
outward  working  only — but  the  heart  from 
which  all  work  proceeds,  displaying  struc- 
ture and  function  and  habit,  till  it  becomes 
at  once  a  record  of  what  has  been  and  a 
prophecy  of  the  future.  And  finally  from 
inanimate  Nature  art  will  learn  the  spell 
through  the  poetry  of  infinite  spaces  in 
Claude,  through  the  mystery  of  light  of  Tur- 
ner, and  Rembrandt's  mystery  of  darkness, 
through  the  solemnity  of  Ruysdael  and  the 
tranquil  pensiveness  of  Corot,  her  language 
will  come  home  to  our  hearts  with  an  under- 
tone of 

'  The  still,  sad  music  of  humanity  ' 

heard  through  the  larger  harmony  of  the 
voices  of  the  sky  and  field  and  mountain." 
— G.  B.  Brown,  "The  Fine  Arts"  §  nj. 

"The  work  of  Millet  so  aptly  illustrates 
this  poetic  art,  this  nature  stamped  by  the 
impress  of  man,  that  I  must  call  your  atten- 
tion to  his  fine  picture  of  'The  Sower.'  I 
have  spoken  of  this  picture  before,  but 
simply  for  the  sake  of  variety,  I  will  not  now 
discard  it  for  a  newer  and  poorer  illustra- 
tion. The  peasant  of  Millet,  considered 
historically  or  ethnographically,  is  not 
essentially  different  from  the  peasant  of  any 
one  of  Millet's  hundred  imitators;  but  after 
being  brooded  over  and  thought  over  in  the 
painter's  mind,  he  became  an  entirely  differ- 
ent person.  He  became  endowed  with 
poetry  and  art,  because  looked  at  from  a 
poetic  and  artistic  point  of  view.  The  dusk 
of  evening,  with  its  warm  shadows,  falls 
about  the  Sower ;  the  heavy  air,  which  the 


REPRESENTA  TIVE  JUDGMENTS 


earth  seems  to  exhale  at  sunset,  enshrouds 
him;  luminous  color-qualities  form  his  back- 
ground; a  rhythm  of  line,  a  swinging  motion 
give  him  strength  and  vitality.  It  was  thus 
the  artistic  eye  of  Millet  saw  him.  In  the 
twilight  sky,  in  the  deep-shadowed  fore- 
ground, we  see  that  the  Sower  works  late ; 
in  the  sweat  and  dust  upon  his  face  and 
the  hat  crowded  over  his  brow  we  see 
that  he  is  weary  with  toil;  in  the  serious 
eyes  looking  out  from  their  deep  sockets  we 
see  the  severity  of  his  fate;  yet  the  strong 
foot  does  not  flinch,  the  swinging  arm  does 
not  falter,  the  parched  lips  do  not  murmur. 


LEARNING    TO    WALK. 
By  J.  F.  Millet,  French  painter ,  famous  for  sympathetic  treatment  of  peasant  life. 


His  life  is  but  a  struggle  for  bare  existence, 
a  battling  against  odds,  but  how  noble  the 
struggle!  how  strong  the  battle!  A  type  of 
thousands  in  the  humble  walks  of  life  bear- 
ing patiently  the  burdens  laid  upon  him, 
though  the  world  has  long  neglected  him 
and  fame  has  never  honored  him,  yet  he  is 
no  less  a  man,  a  brave  man,  a  hero.  It  was 
thus  the  poetic  mind  of  Millet  conceived  him. 
"Here  in  this  picture  of  the  Sower  we  have 
a  good  instance  of  that  something  'between 
a  thought  and  a  thing'  which  Coleridge  took 
to  be  the  aim  of  art.  Here  we  have  the  idea 
in  art,  but  it  will  be  observed  that  it  is  quite 


different  from  the  narrative  ideas  of  litera- 
ture. It  is  not  a  statement  of  fact,  but  a 
suggestive  impression;  not  a  realization  of 
absolute  nature,  but  a  hint  at  those  deep 
meanings  which  will  not  bear  realization — 
those  meanings  which  a  sensitive  soul  may 
know  and  feel,  and  yet  be  able  to  express 
only  in  part.  For  the  idea  in  art  is  at  the 
best  not  like  a  clear-cut  intellectual  thought, 
but  rather  like  a  sympathetic  sensation  or  an 
emotional  feeling.  Yet  call  it  what  we 
choose — emotion,  feeling,  thought,  or  idea 
— it  is  about  the  only  mental  conception  that 
painting  is  capable  of  conveying  or  reveal- 
ing. Without  it  one 
may  produce  art  ad- 
mirable by  virtue  of 
novelty,  color,  form, 
skill  of  hand  —  the 
verve  of  the  artist;  with 
it  one  may  produce  a 
higher  art,  speak  a  no- 
bler language,  serve  a 
loftier  purpose.  For 
what  one  simply  sees  in 
nature  and  portrays  as 
it  is  seen  may  be  good 
art,  but  what  one  thinks 
or  feels  about  what  one 
sees  produces  much 
better  art." — J.  C.  Van 
Dyke,  "Art  for  Art's 
Sake,"  pp.  32-34. 

Habit  of  Observa- 
tion.— And  now  at  the 
end  of  my  task,  which 
has  been  a  pleasure 
even  while  it  offered 

irksome  difficulties  which  I  could  not  foresee, 
let  me  say  in  parting,  that  this  work  will  be 
of  service  to  the  student  precisely  in 
proportion  as  it  succeeds  in  implanting  a 
permanent  habit  of  observing  form  and 
color.  What  we  need  after  all  is  not  books 
and  readings,  but  to  give  ourselves  lei- 
sure and  the  joy  of  looking  at  things  ! 
Let  us  absorb  into  the  spirit  through 
the  eyes,  a  little  of  this  infinite  beauty 
of  life  and  movement  and  color,  this  end- 
lessly vanishing  succession  of  enchant- 
ments, to  produce  which,  as  R.  L.  Steven- 
son writes, 


ON   THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  ART. 


123 


"God's  strange  and  intricate  device 
Of  days  and  seasons  doth  suffice." 

I  had  a  friend  whose  kindness  led  him  to 
activity  among  the  city  working-women. 
But  instead  of  teaching  them  science  or 
bookkeeping  he  tried  to  enrich  their  meager 
lives  with  the  thought  of  beauty.  He  took 
them  to  the  parks  in  the  twilight,  and  they 
forgot  to  eat  their  luncheons  in  watching 
the  marvelous  gradations  of  the  evening 
glow.  He  gave  to  them  the  thoughts  of  mas- 
ters of  poetry  on  the  glory  of  evening  and 
the  restfulness  of  night.  He  showed  them 
prints,  and  in  the  museum  of  that  city  the 
original  works  of  men  who  had  interpreted 
these  things  in  color. 

For  one  of  those  women  it  was  the  begin- 
ning of  new  life.  The  thought  of  beauty 
became  the  solace  of  her  toil.  By  her  own 


testimony  she  had  never  raised  her  head  to 
look  at  the  sunset  before.  The  cares  of  life 
had  weighed  her  down.  The  divine  spark 
was  all  but  quenched. 

Could  we  but  once  gain  that  habit  of  the 
soul  "which  taketh  note  of  beauty"  even 
unconsciously,  while  the  outward  thought  is 
on  other  affairs,  and  which  when  the  soul  is 
free  causes  her  to  return  instinctively  and 
claim  her  own,  we  should  be  sustained  by 
the  strength  of  those  who  have  poured  their 
life  blood  into  their  art.  And  the  weariness 
and  sordidness  of  life  would  measurably  dis- 
appear. At  times  it  will  disappear  utterly, 
and  we  shall  dwell  on  shining  heights;  for  in 
the  moments  when  we  feel  the  inspiration  of 
the  master  to  the  full,  the  line  that  separates 
us  is  but  slight.  We  are,  for  that  moment  at 
least,  great  like  him — great  like  a  god. 


LAZY    SPAIN. 

By  J.  Domingo,  a  Spanish  painter.     Dated  1878.     Original  in  the  Art  Institute,  Chicago. 
Not  a  narrative  of  fact:  but  what  a  "suggestive  impression"1  of  our  late  foe! 


CHURCH    OF    THE    CISTERCIAN    MONASTERY    NEAR    VITERBO. 
From  the  American  Journal  of  Archeology,    Vol.  6. — See  close  of  Lesson  18. 


The  Development  of  Art. 


DY 


BY  A.  L.  FROTHINGHAM,  Jr.,  Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR    OF    ARCHEOLOGY,    PRINCETON    UNIVERSITY. 


FOUR  FORCES  IN  ART.(i7) 
Among  historic  problems  that  of 
the  development  of  art  has  received 
almost  the  least  satisfactory  treat- 
ment   at    the    hands    of    modern    writers. 
Their     good    will     has     been    more      con- 
spicuous  than    their   insight.      The   major- 
ity of  well-educated  people  have  a  distinct 
curiosity  about  art  even  when  their  knowl- 
edge of  it  is  limited,  and  being  confused  by 
the  great  mass  of  material  are  ready  to  sit 
gratefully  at  the  feet  of  any  one  who  will 


clearly  point  out  the  good  and  the  bad  in  the 
art  of  the  past  and  present,  explain  the 
reasons  for  our  artistic  likes  and  dislikes,  and 
after  holding  up  the  mirror  to  ourselves  will 
provide  us  with  principles  to  guide  us  in  our 
judgments,  so  that  passing  out  of  the  narrow 
field  of  our  individual  proclivities  we  may 
have  glimpses,  at  least,  of  the  wide  horizon 
of  general  art-appreciation.  This  involves 
passing  beyond  the  idiosyncrasies,  not  only 
of  our  individual  selves,  but  of  our  race  and 
of  our  time,  and  projecting  ourselves  into  the 
spirit  of  other  races  and  periods  so  thor- 


DEVELOPMENl^  OF  ART. 


oughly  that  we  can  see  their  art  with  their 
eyes  and  not  with  our  own,  sympathetically 
not  critically.  It  is  difficult  enough  for  the 
mass  of  us  Anglo-Saxons  to  view  from  the 
inside  even  the  contemporary  art  of  the  Lat- 
in races,  when  anything  beyond  pure  tech- 
nique is  in  question — the  different  racial 
points  of  view  erecting  a  formidable  barrier. 
But  the  difficulty  is  increased  if  we  are 
called  upon  to  judge  the  art  of  some  other 
period  when  human  nature  was  so  different 
in  its  character  and  activity,  when  art  had 
a  different  mission  and  artists  different 
standards,  when  the  theme  was  sometimes 
thought  more  important  than  the  form,  and 
when  art  was  often  a  creation  rather  of  the 
thinker  than  the  technician.  We  are  so  apt 
to  judge  a  thing  as  a  failure  or  a  success 
according  as  it  does  or  does  not  approach 
our  own  standards,  that  the  first  thing  we 
need  to  learn  is  that  other  ages  had  other 
standards  according  to  which  —  and  not 
according  to  ours — their  works  should  be 
judged. 

The  need  of  some  theory  of  the  develop- 
ment of  art,  of  some  standard  of  art  criti- 
cism, has  been  strongly  felt  ever  since  the 
birth  of  the  modern  historico-critical  school 
at  the  close  of  the  last  century,  ever  since 
the  time  of  Hegel,  of  Lessing,  and  of  Winck- 
elmann.  The  various  theories  and  schools  of 
art  criticism  that  have  since  nourished  may 
be  divided  into  three  classes:  the  philo- 
sophic, the  aesthetic,  and  the  historical. 
Each  has  had  the  defects  of  its  qualities. 
The  explanations  of  the  philosophic  school 
vary  according  to  the  theory  of  the  universe 
that  underlies  each  system.  Art  is  correctly 
taken  to  be  an  integral  part  of  civilization. 
But  the  principal  and  radical  defect  of  the 
theories  of  this  school  arises  from  its  igno- 
rance of  the  actual  facts  of  art  history,  and 
its  usual  lack  of  aesthetic  insight.  No  theory 
yet  propoxinded  seems  to  give  an  adequate 
explanation  of  all  the  data,  or  to  give  a  cor- 
rect estimate  of  the  nature  of  art. 

The  aesthetic  school  goes  to  the  opposite 
extreme.  It  hates  theories  and  denies  the 
intimate  connection  between  art  and  other 
branches  of  civilization.  It  emphasizes  the 
form  to  the  detriment  of  the  thought,  the 
technique  as  against  the  content,  and  adopts 


often  as  its  watchword  the  expression  "Art 
for  Art's  sake."  It  is  in  sympathy  with 
much  of  modern  art,  but  with  very  little  of 
the  art  of  the  past,  and  deprecates  the  con- 
nection of  religious,  moral  and  historic  influ- 
ences— or,  in  fact,  of  thought  in  any  form — 
with  art.  A  work  of  art  according  to  this 
school  should  be  judged  merely  by  the 
standard  of  its  outward  qualities  of  color, 
form,  line  and  composition;  not  by  its  theme 
or  its  treatment  of  the  theme,  not  by  the 
emotions  it  excites  or  the  story  it  conveys. 
Artists  and  art  critics,  so  personal  and  of 
their  age,  and  often  least  imbued  with  phil- 
osophic or  historic  sympathies,  are  apt  to 
belong  to  this  school.  From  its  partisan 
character  it  fails  altogether  to  explain  the 
actual  facts  of  the  development  of  art,  which 
never  evolved  by  its  principles  in  the 
past. 

The  writers  of  the  historic  group  make  the 
least  claim  to  a  theory  of  development.  In 
fact,  they  busy  themselves  more  especially 
with  the  marshaling  of  the  facts  of  art  his- 
tory in  chronological  order.  They  have, 
however,  in  some  cases  come  under  the 
influence  of  a  philosophic  theory,  very  com- 
mon at  present,  that  of  evolution,  which% 
however  valuable  it  may  be  in  explaining 
purely  material  forms,  fails  to  explain  the 
super-material  side  of  the  ^vorld  history. 
The  very  evident  fact  of  the  influence  of  the 
art  of  one  civilization  on  that  of  another  has 
been  magnified  so  as  to  give  an  undue 
importance  to  merely  external  resemblances 
and  to  continuity  of  development.  In  gen- 
eral these  historians  are  apt  to  fail  in  tracing 
the  close  connection  between  art  and  other 
branches  of  civilization,  being  so  wrapped 
up  in  the  study  of  their  own  specialty.  Usu- 
ally, in  fact,  the  causes  of  art  movements 
and  changes  are  not  even  touched  upon, 
and  so  the  sins  of  this  school  are  more  of 
omission  than  commission. 

For  a  successful  analysis  of  the  develop- 
ment of  art  the  methods  of  the  three  schools 
must  be  combined:  all  are  necessary. 

Let  us  now  see  what  are  the  forces  that 
govern  the  field  of  art,  the  forces  that  help 
to  shape  its  products,  that  underlie  the 
things  we  look  at  and  make  them  what  they 
are.  When  we  have  done  this  we  can  study 


126 


DE  VEL  OPMENT 


the  historic  development  of  art  chronolog- 
ically. 

The  first  consideration  is  the  material, 
that  which  the  artist  had  at  hand  to  use  in 
the  expression  of  his  art.  In  almost  every 
country  there  are  certain  products  that  pre- 


ROUEN  CATHEDRAL. 
From  a  charcoal  drawing  by  L.  A.  Lhcrmitte.     Courtesy  of  the  Art  Institu'e,  Chicago. 


dominate;  others  that  are  scarce  or  entirely 
lacking.  When  a  national  art  is  in  process 
of  formation  this  fact  is  of  the  utmost 
importance.  The  earliest  style  of  architec- 
ture —  the  Babylonian  —  was  confined  to 
brick,  and  henceforth  in  this  region  the 
forms  of  architecture  were  those  that  could 


be  developed  by  its  use,; — the  dome,   vault 
and  arch.     It  was  long  before  the  Egyptians, 
with    their   abundant  stone  quarries,  threw 
off  this  yoke  sufficiently  to  develop   freely 
the  style  of   column  and  architrave,    with 
extensive  interiors.    It  is  evident  to  any  one 
studying,  for  example, 
the    various    mediaeval 
schools  of  architecture 
in     Italy    and     France 
that      the     harmonious 
marriage  of  decorative 
and    figured    sculpture 
with    architecture     so 
common    where     stone 
was  employed,  was  im- 
possible   where    bricks 
and    terra    cotta    were 
used.     It  was  the  same 
with   sculpture   and 
painting.     In  the  early 
Greek  sculptures  of 
rough,  porous  stone  the 
surface    was  covered 
with  stucco  and  colored ; 
only   gradually,    after 
the  introduction  of  the 
finer    grained    marbles 
that    needed    no     arti- 
ficial surface,    was   the 
type  of  uncolored  sculp- 
ture   reached.       When, 
in  painting,  the  discov- 
ery of  oils  was  general- 
ized,   in     the    fifteenth 
century,  the  artists  were 
influenced  to  lay  more 
and   more    stress    upon 
color     and     less     upon 
drawing. 

The  next  factor  is 
that  of  method  and 
technique,  and  its  in- 
fluence on  artistic  form. 
This  stands  in  the 

closest  relation  to  the  preceding.  The  fact 
that  the  Moorish  architects  of  the  middle 
ages  centered  their  horseshoe  arches  on 
reeds  bent  and  held  fast  at  the  spring  of 
the  arch,  is  what  gives  the  sweep  of  life 
to  their  arches  in  contrast  to  the  lifeless, 
geometrically  accurate  imitations  in  our 


OF  ART. 


127 


modern  apartment  houses.  As  a  general 
fact  a  special  technique  was  necessarily 
developed  to  suit  each  material  in  each 
branch  of  art.  The  process  was  a  long  one, 
retarded  or  hastened  by  the  degree  of  gen- 
eral culture  prevalent.  It  was  a  process  that 
was  sometimes  a  permanent  gain,  handed 
down  by  tradition  from  one  century  to 
another,  from  one  people  to  another.  Some- 
times, however,  there  was  a  lapse:  a  link  in 
the  chain  was  broken.  In  that  case  either 
the  process  had  to  be  gone  through  labori- 
ously once  more,  as  in  the  early  middle 
ages,  after  the  barbarian  invasions,  or  else 
the  thread  was  brilliantly  picked  up  again, 
as  at  the  Renaissance. 

Full  mastery  over  the  tools  of  one's  art 
being  a  gradual  acquisition,  it  often  happens 
that  perfection  in  this  lower  part  of  artistic 
performance  was  not  attained  until  a  decay 
of  the  higher  elements  of  inspiration  had  set 
in.  We  shall  see  later  how  the  march  of 
technical  evolution  was  usually  in  inverse 
order  to  the  march  of  the  inner  artistic  ele- 
ments. When  the  body  was  perfected  it  had 
become  the  fetish  and  the  soul  was  debased 
or  had  fled. 

A  third  force  is  tradition.  This  is  of 
different  kinds.  There  is  the  tradition  of 
material,  the  tradition  of  technique  and 
form;  the  tradition  of  thought  and  belief. 
All  of  them  are  important,  and  it  is  not 
always  easy  to  separate  them,  so  closely  are 
they  intertwined.  The  wooden  origin  of  the 
members  of  the  Greek  temple  was  forever 
perpetuated  in  the  triglyphs  and  metopes, 
in  the  mutules  and  gultae,  though  stone  and 
marble  so  soon  replaced  wood.  It  illustrates 
how  differently  two  races  may  develop  from 
the  same  beginning  when  we  compare  the 
quick  abandonment  of  wood  by  the  Greeks 
with  its  long  use  by  the  Etruscans,  who, 
having  borrowed  the  type  of  the  wooden 
temple  from  the  Greeks  in  the  Seventh  Cen- 
tury B.  C.,  did  not  give  it  up  even  after  the 
use  of  stone  had  become  general  throughout 
Italy.  The  Etruscans  were  by  nature  much 
more  tenacious  of  tradition  and  more  unin- 
ventive  than  the  Greeks.  Or,  for  a  later 
period,  take  the  example  of  the  cubic  capital 
— a  form  so  common  in  mediaeval  architec- 
ture, especially  in  Germany  and  Normandy. 


It  passed  into  stone  architecture  from  the 
wooden  structures  of  Northern  Europe, 
where  the  wooden  block  above  a  column 
had  its  lower  corners  chamfered.  Very 
often  a  religious  significance,  once  attached 
to  a  material  through  use,  was  the  means  of 
perpetuating  it  by  tradition.  The  flint 
knives  used  in  Roman  sacrifices  were  sur- 
vivals from  early  days  when  metals  were 
unknown;  so  were  the  libation  bowls  of 
black  ware  of  archaic  shape  used  by  the 
priesthood  for  centuries  after  they  had  dis- 
appeared from  ordinary  use,  replaced  by 
painted  or  metal  ware.  The  shapeless  acro- 
lithic  figures  that  the  early  Greeks  worshiped 
as  images  of  the  gods  were  imitated  for  cen- 
turies and  held  to  be  of  divine  origin;  to 
have  something  sacred  in  both  material  and 
shape. 

In  Christian  art  the  types  of  Christ,  the 
Virgin  and  the  Apostles,  established  at  an 
early  date,  were  handed  down  religiously 
until  the  artists  of  the  Renaissance  used 
what  they  regarded  as  their  individual  lib- 
erty in  discarding  them  to  follow  their  own 
fancies  or  contemporary  models. 

Traditions  were  fostered  in  many  ways, 
but  especially  by  religious  influence  and  by 
the  continuity  of  artistic  schools.  The  most 
conspicuous  example  of  this  is  the  school  of 
modern  Byzantine  painters  whose  facile 
hands  block  out  wall-paintings  in  Greek 
churches  while  their  eyes  are  glued  to  a 
manual  of  painting  written  some  six  cen- 
turies ago,  to  the  injunctions  of  which  they 
rigidly  adhere,  not  only  in  the  selection  of 
subjects  but  in  the  placing  and  grouping  of 
them,  in  the  number  and  attitude  of  each 
figure  and  even  in  the  color  of  each  drapery 
and  the  type  of  each  head. 

It  is  also  possible  to  observe  the  interac- 
tion of  one  art  on  another  in  history.  It  is  not 
merely  that  one  day  architecture  is  supreme; 
another  day  painting:  it  is  the  way  in  which 
the  character  of  each  art  is  affected  by  some 
other  art  This  is  most  obvious  in  the  case  of 
the  influence  of  architecture  upon  sculpture. 
Of  course  a  great  deal  of  monumental  sculp- 
ture is  intended  to  be  purely  decorative,  but 
even  where  it  is  independent  its  architec- 
tural frame  work  often  determined  not  only 
the  composition  but  the  attitude  and  lines  of 


128 


DE  VEL  OPMENT 


SOUTH    ENTRANCE   TO   AMIENS   CATHEDRAL. 

the  figures.  In  the  study  of  Greek  sculp- 
ture, for  example,  the  figures  that  were 
grouped  in  the  pediment  of  the  fagade  of  the 
temple  were  at  first  most  awkwardly  sub- 
servient to  its  triangular  shape — as  in  the 
primitive  works  found  among  the  archaic 
sculptures  on  the  Athenian  Acropolis.  This 
awkwardness  is  less  prominent  in  such  works 
of  developed  archaic  sculptures  as  the  ped- 
iments of  ^Egina,  and  when  the  transitional 
stage  of  the  superb  Olympia  pediments  is 
passed  and  we  reach  the  masterpieces  of 
Pheidias  in  the  Parthenon,  the  harmony  of 
the  internal  composition  of  the  pedimental 
sculptures  makes  us  quite  forget  that  there 
is  anything  obligatory  in  the  triangular 
shape  of  the  composition.  A  similar  case  is 
that  of  French  art  in  the  twelfth  and  thir- 
teenth centuries.  In  the  churches  built 
before  the  wave  of  Gothic  swept  the  country 
the  type  of  sculptural  decoration  was  settled 
that  was  to  be  merely  developed  in  the 
great  cathedrals.  Portals  and  walls  framed 
innumerable  reliefs  and  statues.  In  the 
recesses  stood  lines  of  figures  that  took  the 
place  of  columns  and  moldings ;  they  were 


given  most  elongated  proportions,  and  were 
swathed  in  tight-fitting  garments  with  fine 
parallel  vertical  lines  of  drapery,  so  as  to 
give  much  the  same  effect  as  the  architec- 
tural members  they  replaced.  Of  course 
this  subserviency  was  to  the  detriment  of 
their  value  as  separate  works  of  art,  how- 
ever perfect  they  might  be  as  architectural 
decoration,  and  with  the  growth  of  the 
aesthetic  sense  in  early  Gothic  times,  there 
was  a  softening  and  broadening  of  outline, 
a  correcting  of  proportions,  a  preoccupation 
to  give  an  individual  aesthetic  value  without 
interfering  with  the  general  effect.  And  so 
we  start  from  the  portals  of  St.  Trophime, 
of  Le  Mans  and  Old  Chartres,  and  end  at 
Notre  Dame,  New  Chartres,  Rheims  and 
Amiens. 

One  of  the  reasons  for  the  close  connection 
between  the  arts  in  the  past  was  the  fact 
that  almost  every  artist  of  any  talent  was 
then  proficient  in  more  arts  than  one.  We 
are  all  familiar  with  certain  famous  exam- 
ples. We  know  that  Michelangelo  was 
architect,  sculptor  and  painter,  and  showed 
his  genius  almost  equally  in  each,  while 
remaining  in  all  essentially  plastic.  But  we 
are  apt  to  forget  that  in  this  respect  Michel  • 
angelo  was  but  the  heir  of  centuries;  that 
most  mediaeval  cathedral  builders  had  been 
sculptors  and  decorators  as  well  as  archi- 
tects. One  of  the  most  crying  needs  of  the 
present,  as  a  prerequisite  to  any  real  devel- 
opment of  art,  is  a  return  to  this  intimate 
fellowship  of  the  several  arts,  so  that  they 
can  interact  and  help  each  other. 

How  often  a  sculptor  whose  especial  talent 
lay  in  casting  allowed  the  technical  qualities 
of  metal  work  to  appear  in  his  marble  sculp- 
tures! Such  was  the  early  school  of  Argos 
in  Greece;  such  were  several  sculptors  of 
the  early  Renaissance  in  Tuscany.  How 
often  architects  who  were  principally  dec- 
orators— like  the  Lombardi  of  Venice — made 
their  buildings  but  skeletons  to  cloak  with 
ornament!  How  often  painting,  with  its 
picturesqueness  and  its  love  of  details  and 
realistic  settings,  invaded  the  domain  of 
sculpture,  as  in  the  reliefs  of  the  late  Greek 
school  of  Alexandria,  or  in  the  wonderful 
gates  of  Ghiberti  in  the  Florentine  baptis- 
tery: (See  page  29.)  The  sobriety  and 


OF  ART 


129 


reticence  of  true  sculpture  were  lost,  no 
matter  what  was  gained.  This  happened 
not  by  chance,  but  on  account  of  the  suprem- 
acy of  painting  at  both  of  these  periods. 


F 


ORM  AND  CONTENT   OF   ART. 
(18) 


We  have  now  considered  the  mate- 
rials, methods,  traditions  and  inter- 
action of  the  arts  in  so  far  as  they  influence 
the  form  of  art  works. 

There  are  now  to  be  considered  certain 
aesthetic  qualities  that  enter  into  this  form, 
such  as  line,  color,  form,  composition. 
These  qualities  appeal  to  our  senses:  their 
presence  serves  to  distinguish  a  work  of  art 
from  a  work  of  industry.  In  fact  the  critic 
of  the  materialistic  school  would  eliminate 
altogether  from  the  sphere  of  art  those 
works  that  did  not  attain  to  a  certain  stand- 
ard in  these  respects.  Logically  speaking 
this  would  put  out  of  court  nearly  all  the  art 
of  the  world  down  to  the  time  of  the  gener- 
ation before  Pheidias,  and  all  Christian  art 
before  the  Renaissance. 

But  while  this  view  is,  of  course,  unten- 
able, it  is  also  true  that  no  work  of  art 
can  be  satisfactory  if  it  transgress  certain 
canons  of  material  aesthetics.  It  is  also  true 
that  the  aesthetic  qualities  of  the  content  of  a 
work  of  art  have  more  often  been  consid- 
ered of  paramount  importance  than  the 
aesthetic  qualities  of  its  form.  Very  seldom 
are  both  these  qualities  present  in  equal 
perfection  in  any  one  work,  style,  or  period. 
It  is  a  fact  that  when  the  qualities  of  line, 
color  and  composition  are  alone  considered, 
such  theories  can  be  seriously  propounded 
as  that  a  litter  of  pigs  is  as  noble  a  subject 
for  the  artist  as  any  other.  This  is  simply 
a  sign  that  art  has  become  wholly  material, 
which  is  quite  as  reprehensible  a  state  as 
that  which  despises  material  perfection.  In 
fact  it-  is  simply  a  question  of  balancing  in 
one's  judgment  which  is  the  higher  art,— one 
that  makes  religious,  moral  and  social 
appeal,  or  one  that  appeals  entirely  to  the 
senses.  It  is  all  art,  and  the  critic  should 
avoid  becoming  a  partisan  of  either  the  ideal 
or  the  realistic  school,  but  assign  to  each  its 


place.  A  lover  of  the  ideal  can  very  well 
take  immense  satisfaction  in  beauty  of  form 
and  color,  and  so  vice-versa.  But  we  must 
remember  that  this  impartiality,  which  is 
possible  for  us  who  are  calmly  critical  and 
rather  unproductive  of  any  style  of  our  own, 
would  have  been  impossible  in  other  ages, 
when  art  was  not,  as  with  us,  a  cosmopolitan 
composite,  but  a  very  part  of  the  life.  As  for 
us,  we  can  imitate  the  Parthenon  and  the 
Pantheon,  A  miens  Cathedral  and  the  Strozzi 
Palace,  Michelangelo  and  the  pre-Raphael- 
ites.  It  would  be  a  pity,  with  all  the  world  of 
art  ready  to  hand  in  the  originals  or  in  thou- 
sands of  casts  and  photographs,  with  our 
endowed  art  schools  and  academies  and  our 
thousands  of  wealthy  patrons,  if  we  could 
not  attain  to  some  degree  of  material  per- 
fection, nor  is  it  surprising  that  we  are 
tempted  to  make  a  fetish  of  this  part  of  art. 
But  of  this  we  should  not  be  proud. 

It  will  become  quite  clear,  in  our  histor- 
ical survey  of  the  monuments,  what  periods, 
styles  or  artists  especially  excelled  in  these 
various  aesthetic  qualities,  and  to  this  survey 
I  will  refer  for  details. 

The  material  and  formal  elements  in  a 
work  of  art  that  have  just  been  described 
are  completed  by  a  third  element,  that  of  its 
purpose  or  content.  This  is  really  the  con- 
trolling element  in  nearly  all  historic  art.  It 
is  also  the  most  elusive  element;  the  most 
difficult  to  analyze  because  it  pertains  to  the 
spirit  and  not  to  the  body  of  art.  It  is  in 
this  field  that  has  been  waged  the  combat 
between  Idealism  and  Realism.  It  is 
through  this  element  of  its  nature  that  art 
is  one  of  the  world-forces,  is  the  embodiment 
of  religious,  civic  and  moral  ideas,  the  illus- 
tration of  public  and  private  life,  the  expres- 
sion of  one  of  the  most  powerful  aspects  of 
human  genius.  Historically  speaking  art  did 
not  develop  in  order  to  attain  a  certain  per- 
fection in  mere  effects  of  form  and  color; 
but  as  one  means  of  expressing  and  serving- 
other  phases  of  civilization  in  a  way  exactly 
corresponding  to  literature.  Each  supple- 
mented the  other,  and  each  said  things  that 
the  other  could  not  so  well  express;  each 
could  in  its  sphere  be  more  definite,  more 
expressive.  The  true  test  of  the  success  of 
any  work  was  whether  it  filled  this  office 


130 


DEVELOPMENT 


well  or  not.  If  we  wish  to  see  the  Greek 
gods  and  heroes  with  Greek  eyes  we  must 
turn  to  their  art  as  well  as  to  their  literature. 
How  many  forms  of  Christian  belief  were 
represented  in  art  before  the  church  decided 
to  erect  them  into  dogmas  and  give  them 
definite  literary  form!  Without  religion 
and  the  state  there  would  have  been  no  art, 
because  to  attain  to  any  dignity  art  must 
have  aims  and  a  cause.  This  general  fact 
being  stated  it  is  interesting  to  see  on  how 
many  sides  of  art  this  influence  was  felt. 
In  architecture,  for  a  first  instance,  the  con- 
ditions and  character  of  ritual  determined 
the  form  of  religious  structures,  and  these 
religious  structures  have  been  at  every  pe- 
riod those  that  have  made  architectural  his- 
tory. If  in  the  Greek  temple  the  stress  was 
laid  on  the  exterior  it  was  because  the 
religious  ceremonies  were  held  in  the  open 
and  the  buildings  were  mainly  treasuries, 
storehouses  and  halls  for  cult  statues.  If, 
on  the  contrary,  the  Christian  church  for 
many  centuries  had  the  plainest  exterior, 
whose  shape  even  was  determined  by  that 
of  the  interior,  it  was  because  Christian 
worship  was  within  doors,  and  a  large 
interior,  so  ordered  as  to  accommodate  the 
various  classes  of  communicants,  was  neces- 
sary. And  the  late  form  of  the  single-naved 
and  hall  church,  so  favored  by  the  preaching 

orders  —  Domini- 
cans, Franciscans, 
Jesuits  —  was  in- 
vented so  that  the 
preacher  could  be 
better  heard 
through  out  the 
whole  interior. 


a 

rr    «rr 


GROUND   PLAN   OF  AMIENS 
CATHEDRAL. 

Note  the  large  choir. 


CHRISTIAN  BASILICA  OF 
SAN  PAOLO  FUORL 
DELLEMURA  AT  ROME. 

Note  the  small  apse. 


Then  again,  if  we  wonder  at  the  sudden 
development  of  the  choir  in  mediaeval 
compared  with  the  simple  small  apses  of 
earlier  structures,  our  wonder  ceases  when 
we  understand  that  these  choirs,  whose  rich- 
ness changed  the  entire  aesthetic  effect  of 
the  churches,  were  first  used  in  monastic 
edifices  where  it  was  necessary  to  provide  a 
place  for  the  great  mass  of  monks  that  lived 
in  the  monastery — often  as  many  as  four  or 
five  hundred — and  that  this  had  to  be  done, 
not  in  the  body  of  the  church  where  the  lay- 
men were  placed,  but  in  the  upper  part, 
which  was  always  occupied  by  the  clergy 

Another  kind  of  conscious  ideal  is  that 
held  by  any  body  of  men  inspired  by  one 
motive  force.  Such,  for  instance,  was  the 
Cistercian  order  of  monks.  They  were  the 
greatest  building  organization  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages,  and  led  a  reaction  against  rich- 
ness of  architectural  form  and  decoration. 
They  were  the  Quakers  among  architects. 
Here  was  plain  natural  stone,  without  sculp- 
tured or  pictorial  decoration,  no  flaunting  of 
high  towers  or  rich  portals,  no  leading  the 
mind  astray  from  rigid  contemplation  by  vain 
display  of  painted-glass  windows  or  elaborate 
figured  capitals.  The  churches  scattered 
over  the  whole  of  Europe  testify  to  this 
unity  of  purpose.  (See  illustration,  p.  124.) 

There  were  other  modes  of  religious  in- 
fluence more  conscious  and  more  ideal.  The 
symbolism  of  mediaeval  architecture,  as  ex- 
pressed in  the  famous  book  of  Bishop  Du- 
rand,  with  its  sacred  numbers,  which  often 
influenced  the  number  of  windows  and  piers ; 
the  symbolism  of  the  "bestiaries"  with  their 
real  and  fabulous  animals,  all  with  some  deep 
significance — all  have  a  distinct  place  in  art. 

In  contradistinction  to  other  civilizations 
there  is  one  in  whose  architecture  religion 
was  no  more  prominent  than  in  our  own — 
that  of  Rome.  Yet  two  things — law  and 
architecture — were  most  representative  of 
the  Roman  spirit.  Even  more  than  with  the 
Assyrians  in  earlier  times,  their  monuments 
reflected  the  splendor  of  the  state,  the  maj- 
esty of  Rome  throughout  the  conquered 
world,  or  else  ministered  to  the  increasing 
love  of  luxury,  comfort  and  amusement, 
and  so  kept  the  people  content.  In  both 
cases  there  was  a  common  purpose.  The 


OF  ART 


THE    CIRCUS    OF    CALIGULA    AND    NERO    AS    IT    STOOD    IN    ANCIENT    ROME. 


forums,  basilicas  and  colonnades,  triumphal 
arches  and  columns,  were  equaled  by  the 
baths,  theaters  and  amphitheaters.  No 
other  architects  ever  planned  such  complex 
and  immense  structures.  It  is  difficult  to 
say  how  much  was  pure  art  in  all  this,  and 
how  much  due  to  political  and  social  motives. 
In  all  these  and  many  other  ways  did  other 
and  more  internal  branches  of  civilization 
mold  the  development  of  the  fine  arts. 


HISTORIC  DEVELOPMENT. (19) 
The  earliest  civilization  and  con- 
sequently the  earliest  art  orig- 
inated in  Western  Asia,  in  the 
valley  of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates.  Our 
own  American  excavations  at  Nippur  are  at 
this  very  moment  enabling  us  to  say  that  the 
art  of  Babylonia  is  almost  surely  several 
thousand  years  older  than  4000  B.  C. ,  which 
had  until  now  been  thought,  even  by  the  more 
sanguine,  its  earliest  date.  But  we  are  still 
unacquainted  with  the  first  stages  through 
which  the  Babylonians  passed  in  creating  the 
arts.  In  judging  them  we  must  remember 
that  they  had  no  models  nor  traditions  to 
help  them.  They  had  no  stone  quarries,  no 


forests  for  timber;  and  were  therefore 
handicapped  for  both  architecture  and  sculp- 
ture. Even  their  tools  had  to  be  created  as 
instinct  and  ingenuity  taught  them.  In 
forming  a  style  of  architecture,  the  only 
material  at  hand — clay  for  bricks — led  to 
the  creation  of  the  arch,  vault  and  dome  as 
the  only  possible  means  of  obtaining  spaces 
in  the  masses  of  brick.  The  flatness  of  the 
landscape  made  it  natural  to  create  an 
imposing  style  of  architecture  that  should 
count  in  the  scenery.  With  brick  it  was  not 
possible  to  have  much  variety  of  architec- 
tural memberment  or  sculptural  decoration; 
consequently  color  was  the  main  reliance. 
Certainly  the  Orient  is  the  home  of  color. 
The  Babylonians  and  after  them  the  Assyri- 
ans and  Persians,  the  Syrians  and  Arabs, 
have  entranced  the  world  with  color. 
Whether  they  blend  the  most  delicate  shades 
or  make  the  most  daring  combinations  their 
color  sense  is  so  fine  that  they  make  no 
blunders — at  least  none  that  can  shock  our 
blunter  sensibilities;  and  who  can  wonder  at 
it  that  has  once  seen  the  wonderful  color 
effects  in  nature  during  the  springtime  in 
the  Euphrates  Valley!  From  the  beginning 
until  now,  for  some  eight  or  more  thousand 
years,  this  exquisite  reproduction  of  colors 


132 


DEVELOPMENT 


in  Oriental  art  has  gone  on.  It  has  at  times 
overflowed  upon  us.  The  glorious  Sicilian 
mosaics  at  Monreale,  Cefalu  and  Palermo, 
and  the  splendid  coloring  of  the  Venetian 
school  of  painting  are  of  the  Orient.  Prob- 
ably it  was  the  constant  importation  of 
Oriental  stuffs  that  fanned  the  sacred  fire  in 
Greece  and  helped  painting  to  a  rebirth  in 
the  middle  ages. 

In  one  other  thing  the  Assy ro- Babylonians 
excelled, — sculpture  in  relief.  In  many  of 
their  long  friezes  in  very  low  relief  depicting 
the  life,  sports  and  warlike  exploits  of  the 
Assyrian  kings  there  is  a  mastery  of  the  high 
simplicity  of  sculptural  composition;  an 
exquisite  finish  of  detail  kept  subject  to  the 
general  effect;  a  reproduction  of  life — espe- 
cially animal  life — that  is  most  faithful  with- 
out becoming  pictorially  realistic.  There  is 
little  doubt  that  the  Greeks  gained  inspira- 
tion from  these  works,  for  the  same  qualities 
appear,  transformed,  in  Hellenic  sculptures 
of  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries. 

Meanwhile  the  other  center  of  early  art 
had  been  Egypt.  It  is  quite  possible  that  its 
art,  which  seems  fairly  developed  in  certain 
branches  at  the  very  beginning  of  Egyptian 
history,  was  not  autochthonous  but  imported 
by  a  "Hamitic"  branch  of  the  Babylonians, 
who  broke  away  from  the  main  stem.  They 
thus  freed  themselves  from  the  Semitic 
influence  and  the  differences  that  appear 
between  their  art,  and  that  of  the  Hamitic 
left-overs  in  Babylonia  may  have  been  due 
partly  to  this  separation  and  partly  to  the 
influences  of  the  new  country.  The  Egyp- 
tian pyramids  were  the  only  important  archi- 
tectural structures  of  the  land  for  centuries: 
columnar  temple  architecture  was  a  compar- 
atively late  development.  Now,  the  great 
structure  in  Babylonia  had  also  been  pyra- 
midal in  shape — a  stepped  pyramid — serving 
as  temple  and  observatory.  To  build  such 
a  solid  mass  of  sun-dried  bricks  faced  with 
kiln-dried  bricks  or  tiles,  as  was  the  case  in 
Babylonia,  was  natural,  but  to  put  to  this  use 
the  superb  stone  from  Egyptian  quarries 
was  unnatural.  Consequently  the  form  may 
have  been  in  Egypt  an  imported  one.  After 
the  Egyptians  discovered  that  instead  of 
turning  stone  into  great  featureless  masses 
they  could  cut  it  up  into  architraves,  piers 


and  columns,  and  so  obtain  spacious  interiors 
and  artistic  play  of  light  and  shade,  and  that 
they  could  carve  beautiful  details,  adapted 
from  nature,  on  the  stone,  they  abandoned 
the  pyramidal  style  and  developed  the  col- 
umnar temple  and  tomb.  If,  therefore,  we 
seek  for  the  one  art-form  that  the  world 
owes  to  Egypt,  it  is  that  of  columnar  archi- 
tecture. The  series  of  halls  and  courts  that 
formed  the  Egyptian  temple  are  the  proto- 
types of  everything  in  this  class  that  follows, 
whether  in  the  Orient  or  in  Greece  and 
Rome.  But  the  Egyptian  type  has  a  mas- 
siveness,  a  somberness,  a  titanic  quality  that 
makes  it  stand  for  a  distinct  ideal — that  of 
the  material  sublime.  This  material  quality 
of  the  Egyptian  character  is  evident  in  other 
branches  of  their  art.  The  Babylonians  and 
Assyrians  had  never  attained  to  any  degree 
of  realism  in  sculpture  in  the  round ;  but  in 
Egypt  the  artist,  spurred  on  by  the  religious 
belief  that  made  it  necessary  for  the  soul's 
salvation  that  an  exact  and  lasting  image  of 
the  deceased  should  be  placed  in  the  tomb 
for  the  spirit  to  return  to,  became  able  to 
reproduce  with  wonderful  exactness  the  per- 
sonal traits  of  each  individual.  To  them, 
therefore,  do  we  owe  the  first  portraits, 
which  were  unequaled  for  life-like  qualities 
until,  after  a  lapse  of  over  two  thousand 
years,  we  reach  the  age  of  Alexander.  It  is 
curious  to  note  how  hieratic  stiffness  and 
traditional  sameness  were  all  the  time  waging 
a  deadly  war  in  Egypt  with  this  realism,  and 
finally  overcame  it,  so  that,  beginning  with 
the  New  Empire  the  power  to  grasp  personal 
traits  had  vanished  almost  entirely.  Aside 
from  the  mystic  grandeur  of  its  architecture 
Egypt  never  showed  any  artistic  imagination 
or  poetry,  and  only  seldom  does  a  touch  of 
humor  illuminate  the  sameness. 

The  minor  peoples  of  the  Orient  that 
bowed  down  alternately  to  these  two  great 
forces  of  the  valleys  of  the  Euphrates  and 
the  Nile,  contributed  but  little,  and  bor- 
rowed nearly  all.  But  now  the  Hellenic 
world  is  born,  in  the  fusions  and  migrations 
of  peoples  before  and  after  the  time  of  the 
Trojan  war.  Certainly  the  path  was  made 
comparatively  smooth  for  the  development 
of  Greek  art  by  the  whole  world  of  Oriental 
art  whose  splendid  products  were  known  to 


OF  ART. 


the  Greeks  by  importation  and  travel.  The 
massive,  rich  and  rather  barbaric  semi- 
Oriental  art  of  the  time  of  the  Homeric 
heroes,  the  art  of  the  Pelasgians  and  Achae- 
ans,  was,  however,  hardly  connected  intrin- 
sically with  Greek  art  as  we  understand  it, 
the  art  that  grew  up  during  the  two  cen- 
turies before  the  wars  with  Persia.  What 
the  Greeks  of  the  historic  age  added  to  the 
general  domain  of  art  as  a  permanent 
acquisition  was  not  so  much  a  special 
form  of  structure,  a  method  of  workman- 
ship, or  a  new  branch  of  art — though  they 
did  all  these  things.  It  was  rather  the 
infusion  of  a  new  spirit.  Until  then  archi- 
tecture had  been  more  impressive  than 
refined ;  sculpture  and  painting  didactic  and 
descriptive,  but  not  inspiring.  Greek  art  in 
the  fifth  century  B.  C.  added  the  element  of 
inner  life,  not  in  all  its  forms,  it  is  true,  for 
no  one  civilization  could  do  that,  but  in  the 
form  of  the  worship  of  beauty;  not  the 
more  spiritual  "beauty  of  holiness"  of  the 
Hebrews;  not  the  intellectual,  self-conscious, 
and  complex  beauty  of  the  Renaissance ;  but 
a  poetic  beauty,  fed  by  imagination,  seeking 
expression  in  the  form  of  simple  types,  in 
myths,  in  all  forms  of  symbolic  and  analog- 
ical plastic  thought.  When  the  Greeks  hon- 
ored a  victor  in  the  athletic  games  by 
erecting  a  statue  to  commemorate  his  tri- 
umph, this  statue  was  not  a  portrait  of  the 
victor,  as  would  have  been  the  case  with  the 
Romans,  the  Renaissance  and  ourselves:  it 
was  the  representation  of  the  ideal  athlete, 
the  most  perfect  rendering  of  the  type,  of 
the  harmony  of  human  forces,  the  possession 
of  which  had  enabled  this  particular  athlete 
to  triumph.  Type,  analogy,  symbolism  in 
the  conception;  poetry,  symmetry,  simplicity 
in  the  form ;  and  plastic  beauty  over  all. 

The  form  of  this  art  is  primarily  plastic  in 
every  branch.  The  same  beauty  of  line,  the 
same  rhythm,  the  same  harmony  that  make 
Greek  sculpture  so  perfect,  are  the  very 
qualities  that  we  admire  in  the  Greek  tem- 
ple ;  its  architecture  also  is  plastic,  not  con- 
structive or  picturesque.  For  this  reason  it 
does  not  fill  so  completely  the  whole  range 
of  architectural  possibilities,  though  perfect 
as  far  as  it  goes.  Greece  gave,  then,  to  the 
world,  ideal  types  and  plastic  form.  This  is 


in  harmony  with  Greek  philosophy,  litera- 
ture and  poetry.  Plato's  world  of  ideas,  of 
types,  the  more  perfect  counterparts  of 
human  specimens,  is  a  world  of  plastic 
ideals.  The  world  of  the  Greek  dramatists 
is  peopled  with  figures  that  stand  out  on 
their  pages  with  statuesque  simplicity  and 
clearness.  The  value  and  development  of 
the  individual  was  recognized,  but  always 
tempered  by  his  relation  and  subordination 
to  the  type  of  good  citizen  as  outlined  by  the 
laws  of  Solon  or  Lycurgus  or  in  the  republic 


JULIUS    CVESAR. 
In  the  Vatican  Museum,  Rome. 


of  Plato.  The  distinction  between  good  and 
evil,  so  blurred  since  the  Renaissance,  was 
held  to  be  vital  by  the  Greeks,  and  their 
public  art  allows  itself  no  license. 

Greek  art  furthermore  exemplifies  certain 
laws  of  precedence.  The  archaic  age  of  the 
sixth  century  was  followed  by  the  epic  age  of 
the  fifth  century,  the  lyric  age  of  the  fourth 
century,  and  the  dramatic  age  of  the  Alex- 
andrian period.  Each  of  these  phases  devel- 
oped according  to  laws  that  operated  in 
every  period.  During  the  middle  ages,  for 


134 


DEVELOPMENT 


example,  the  Romanesque  age  (11-12  cens.), 
has  corresponding  characteristics  to  Greek 
archaicism,  such  as  stiffness  of  form,  love 
of  portraiture  with  inability  to  carry  it  out, 
fanatical  copying-  of  detail.  The  Gothic  age 
that  followed  corresponds  exactly  to  the  epic 
age  of  Pheidias  in  its  harmonious  marriage 


An  antique  group  in  the  Vatican,  Rome,  showing  a   Trojan  priest  of  Apollo  and  his  two 
sons  attacked  by  serpents. 


of  architecture  and  sculpture,  its  abandon- 
ment of  detail  for  broad  effects,  its  creation 
of  general  types,  and  its  idealism.  The 
Renaissance  sculpture  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury furthermore  carried  out  the  same 
changes  as  did  the  lyric  Greek  sculpture  of 
Praxiteles  and  his  compeers  in  the  fourth 
century  B.  C. :  the  abandonment  of  ideal 


types,  the    cult    of    the    beautiful  verging 
sometimes  on  the  effeminate  and  the  finical ; 
the  search  for  grace  and  delicacy  of  line,  the 
study  of  the  nude  with  increasing  sensuous- 
ness.      Finally  the  barocco  style  of    Italy, 
beginning  with  Michelangelo,    is  the  exact 
counterpart  of  the  Alexandrian  age  in  its 
dramatic  intensity,  its 
pathos,   its  luxuriance 
of    form,   its    love    of 
extremes  in  muscular 
development  and  mo- 
tion,  and   its   prepon- 
derance  of    details. 
Such  correspondences 
are    not  coincidences, 
but  the  result  of   the 
working   of    the    laws 
that  govern  the  devel- 
opment of  each  civili- 
zation that  has  an  in- 
dependent life. 

The  fusion  of  forces 
in  the  time  of  Alexan- 
der by  which  Hellen- 
ism in  its  later  form 
spread  over  the  world 
and  was  merged  first 
with  the  Orient  and 
then  with  Rome, 
brought  certain  new 
or  transformed  forces 
into  the  domain  of  the 
history  of  art.  The 
Orient  contributed 
ideas  of  the  material 
sublime  that  were 
taken  up  by  the  Greeks 
and  shown  in  such 
works  as  the  Mauso- 
leum of  Halicarnassus, 
the  Colossus  of  Rhodes, 
and  the  Pergamene 
Altar.  The  new  spirit 

of  extremes  in  everything  —  in  realism, 
sophistical  skepticism,  comedy  and  satire — 
found  expression  in  a  hundred  forms,  in 
superb  sculptured  portraits  such  as  those  of 
Alexander  and  his  successors,  or  dramatic 
groups  like  the  Laocoon,  picturesque  or 
obscene  works  such  as  the  reliefs  of  the 
Alexandrian  school  or  genre  scenes  such  as 


OF  ART. 


»35 


the  Pompeiian  and  Herculanean  paint- 
ings. Art  is  no  longer  typical,  no 
longer  serene  and  well-balanced,  no 
longer  unconscious,  but  appeals  to  and 
represents  all  the  passions,  meretri- 
cious instincts  and  foibles  of  man,  seek- 
ing to  inflame  rather  than  elevate. 

This  art  flourished  also  under  Rome, 
but  with  an  added  matter-of-fact  qual- 
ity, a  love  of  contemporary  history,  a 
more  decided  attempt  to  magnify  the 
individual — for  with  the  Romans  per- 
sonality was  everything.  Their  one 
ideal,  the  personality  of  the  state,  found 
expression  in  the  architectural  mon- 
uments that  proclaimed  its  world- 
power.  For  the  Romans  were  nothing 
if  not  practical,  and  turned  the  arts 
into  gigantic  advertising  mediums. 
Richness,  impressiveness,  strong  col- 
ors, size,  were  far  more  important  to 
them  than  the  exquisite  products  of 
the  pure  antique  Greek  beauty  which 
they  could  not  appreciate.  The  sense 
of  it  had,  in  fact,  almost  disappeared 
from  among  the  degenerate  Greeks 
themselves.  In  so  far  as  the  ancient 
world  could  be  pictorial  at  all  the  Roman 
stage  represents  painting,  in  the  same 
way  as  the  Greeks  were  the  champions 
of  sculpture  and  the  Oriental  nations 
of  architecture. 

A  Roman  building  in  the  height  of  its 
splendor  —  whether  temple,  palace,  bath, 
basilica  or  any  other  of  their  great  civil 
structures,  was  a  mass  of  color.  The 
concrete  and  brick  walls  were  covered 
without  and  within  by  incrustations  of 
rich  marbles,  by  mosaics  or  by  paintings. 
Not  an  inch  of  space  from  the  mosaic 
floor  to  the  ceiling  but  was  flashing  with 
color. 

The  reason  for  this  double  pre-eminence 
of  the  Roman  age,  in  civil  architecture  and 
in  color  is  easy  to  see  as  soon  as  we  under- 
stand that  the  whole  ancient  world  was  an 
age  of  architecture,  in  which  most  of  the 
architectural  forms  that  were  afterwards 
used  and  developed  were  originated:  and 
that  within  this  age  the  successive  periods  of 
the  Orient,  Greece  and  Rome  represent  the 
relative  preponderance  respectively  of  the 


WALL    DECORATION    IN    THE    HOUSE    OF    LUCRETIUS    AT 
POMPEII. 


purely  architectural,  purely  plastic,  and 
purely  pictorial  elements;  but  always  the 
plastic  and  pictorial  elements  are  subordi- 
nated to  architecture.  A  moment's  reflec- 
tion will  show,  for  example,  that  from 
beginning  to  end  Greek  sculpture  held 
its  connect  i  on 
with  architecture, 
from  the  time 
of  the  earliest 
temple  sculptures 
of  Athens  to  the 
time  of  the  Per- 
gamene  frieze. 
And  we  have  just 
seen  how  subor- 
dinated to  archi- 
tecture was  the 

pictorial    develop-        A  LioN,g  H£AD  poUND 
ment  of  Rome.  THE  LAKE  OF  NEMI. 


136 


DEVELOPMENT 


H 


ISTORIC    DEVELOPMENT.— 
Continued.  (20) 


The  old  world  was  worn  out  at 
last.  Technical  perfection  had 
gradually  disappeared  under  the  Roman 
emperors  on  the  heels  of  the  departed 
genius  of  beauty.  The  idol  of  beauty  of 
form,  already  practically  cast  down  from 
its  pedestal  by  natural  disintegration,  was 
finally  shattered  by  the  setting  up  of  an 
entirely  new  ideal  by  Christianity.  But  this 
ideal,  as  was  natural,  did  not  for  some  time 
take  shape  in  art,  for  it  needed  to  manifest 
itself  first  in  religious  and  social  reconstruc- 
tion. To  any  one  studying  the  works  of 
early  Christian  art  in  the  Catacombs  at 
Rome  the  decay  of  technical  skill  in  paint- 
ing and  sculpture  will  be  more  evident  than 
any  originality  or  power.  The  simple  sym- 
bolism in  them  does  not  show  .any  self-con- 
scious artistic  birth ;  they  are  transcripts  of 
the  faith  and  hope  of  the  mass  of  Christians, 
but  neither  in  form  nor  content  are  they 
worthy  to  be  placed  by  the  side  of  the  reli- 
gious and  social  manifestations  of  Chris- 
tianity during  the  same  period. 

When  the  artistic  awakening  did  come  it 
came  from  the  eastern  and  Greek  elements 
in  the  Christian  church,  the  same  elements 
that  had  originated  every  other  new  Chris- 
tian form  except  that  of  church  government, 
which  was  more  perfectly  developed  by  the 
Latin  element.  An  art  arose  during  the 
fourth  and  fifth  centuries  that  was  no  more 
than  an  artistic  creed,  a  crystallizing  for  the 
eye  of  the  same  thoughts  that  rang  out  in 
church  pulpits  from  the  lips  of  a  Chrysos- 
tom  or  a  Gregory.  The  church  seized 
upon  art  as  a  means  of  instructing  the  peo- 
ple. Pope  Sixtus  dedicated  (circum  420)  "to 
the  people  of  God"  the  mosaics  decorating 
the  basilica  of  S.  Maria  Maggiore  in  Rome. 
This  dependence  of  art  lasted  for  about  a 
thousand  years.  Gregory  of  Tours  (seventh 
century)  gives  us  the  picture  of  a  French 
bishop  seated  with  the  open  Bible  before 
him,  instructing  the  artist  at  his  work,  and 
church  councils  even  defined  artists  as 
merely  mouthpieces. 

The  most  complete  expression  of  this  form 
of  art  is  that  of  the  Christian  Orient  which 


is  usually  termed  Byzantine  art.  In  it  the 
creative  Greek  spirit,  transformed  and  ideal- 
ized by  Christianity,  rushed  to  the  opposite 
extreme  from  its  last  manifestation  in  the 
Alexandrian  school:  in  penance  for  its  pagan 
fleshiness  it  espoused  excessive  asceticism; 
and  in  place  of  material  beauty  it  set  up  the 
worship  of  spiritual  beauty,  even  shining 
through  material  ugliness  at  times,  in  order 
to  emphasize  the  renunciation. 

The  theocratic  organization  of  the  Byzan- 
tine state,  the  intense  religious  feeling  per- 
vading the  daily  life  of  all  classes  and  carried 
to  excess  in  the  monasteries,  combined  to 
produce  an  art  that  was  more  stereotyped 
than  any  before  or  since.  It  became  easy 
for  the  clergy  to  turn  art  into  a  weapon 
finely  forged  for  offense  or  defense. 

The  artist-monks,  being  but  links  in  a 
chain,  atoms  in  a  system,  were  undesirous 
of  personal  renown;  the  series  of  art  sub- 
jects and  the  mode  of  representing  them 
being  once  established,  there  was  no  incen- 
tive to  depart  from  these  standards. 

While  this  art  was  ruling  the  Christian 
East  the  political  disintegration  of  Europe 
between  the  sixth  and  eleventh  centuries 
had  been  matched  by  artistic  disintegration. 
When  the  revival  came  during  the  eleventh 
century  Byzantism  was  heavily  drawn  upon 
not  only  in  the  selection  and  treatment  of 
subjects  in  sculpture  and  painting  but  in  the 
technical  processes  of  many  branches  of  art. 
Still,  it  affected  the  content  more  than  the 
form.  In  architecture  Byzantism  had  but 
little  effect,  for  the  Romanesque  style, 
founded  on  elements  in  classic  Roman  and 
early  Christian  architecture,  was  essentially 
an  original  development  of  the  West,  a 
product  of  the  amalgamation  of  the  tribes 
of  the  North  with  the  remnants  of  antique 
culture.  At  no  other  time  was  architecture 
more  absolutely  the  master-art,  leading  all 
others  as  servants  in  its  train.  This  was 
necessary  and  salutary;  in  no  other  way 
would  it  have  been  possible  to  reconstruct 
art  in  unity. 

The  organic  development  of  the  two 
Romanesque  centuries  (11-12  cens.),  with 
a  continual  tending  toward  unity  of  effort, 
made  the  Gothic  "unity  in  diversity"  possi- 
ble. Sculpture  and  painting,  after  a  period 


OF  ART. 


137 


of  training  and  strict  supervision, 
reached  their  efflorescence;  that  of 
sculpture  commencing  in  France  early 
in  the  thirteenth  century  and  that  of 
painting  in  Italy  at  the  close  of  the 
same  century.  This  was,  in  fact,  a 
stage  when  in  architecture  and  sculp- 
ture that  rare  union  took  place,  as  in 
Greece  during  the  fifth  century,  of  a 
perfect  content  and  a  perfect  technique. 
The  Gothic  cathedral  in  France,  with 
its  every  constructive  detail  carried  out 
in  harmony  with  certain  fixed  laws  to 
which  the  artist  submitted  himself; 
with  an  organic  sculptural  decoration 
on  a  large  scale  that  was  a  real  plastic 
encyclopaedia  corresponding  to  the 
Theological  Summa  of  Thomas  Aqui- 
nas, this  cathedral  was  a  grandly  con- 
ceived whole.  Every  detail,  from  the 
stained  glass  windows  to  the  gargoyles 
and  finials,  is  in  its  right  place  and 
could  be  right  nowhere  else.  Things 
that  would  seem  imperfect  if  detached, 
because  rough  in  treatment,  perhaps, 
or  foreshortened  or  colored  to  suit  their 
position,  yet  fill  their  purpose  perfectly,  and 
better  than  if  perfect  in  themselves  Gothic 
art  in  France  was  a  world  in 'itself,  in  which 
nothing  was  forgotten  or  neglected,  but 
everything  done  with  unity  of  purpose  and 
of  style.  The  day  has  passed  when  the 
Gothic  style  could  be  regarded  as  an  irre- 
sponsible sort  of  poetic  creation  that  could 
not  be  reasoned  about.  It  is,  on  the  con- 
trary, the  most  scientifically  developed  in  its 
architecture,  the  most  closely  organized  and 
comprehensive  in  its  use  of  every  branch  of 
art  in  perfect  unity  of  style.  The  aims  of 
this  art  were  noble:  it  was  religious,  it  was 
moral:  it  inspired  and  taught:  it  reached 
many  more  of  the  masses  than  could  be 
reached  by  literature,  and  was  one  of  the 
great  agencies  of  civilization,  giving  new 
thoughts  and  higher  impulses.  There  are 
peculiarities  in  the  style  of  its  figures  that 
act  as  obstacles  to  our  appreciation.  We  are 
so  constituted,  just  at  this  time,  that  we 
think  the  length  of  the  nose  or  the  leg  things 
of  paramount  importance,  and  we  "cannot 
away"  with  anything  that  sins  in  this  partic- 
ular. Intentional  poetic  licenses  we  allow: 


AMIENS    CATHEDRAL. 


similar  artistic  licenses  we  taboo.  Some- 
time we  shall  know  better  and  lay  hold  of 
the  essentials. 

The  Renaissance  was  essentially  a  pic- 
torial age.  Architecture  lost  its  supremacy: 
there  were  no  longer  great  systematic  cycles 
of  sculptures  as  in  the  Gothic  cathedrals. 
Religious  and  moral  forces,  themselves  sadly 
weakened,  lost  their  hold  on  art.  General 
laws  -were  replaced  by  individual  prefer- 
ences, so  that  unity  was  resolved  into  a  mul- 
titude of  disconnected  units.  There  were 
no  longer  truly  national  styles:  even  local 
schools  lost  much  of  their  special  character: 
each  man  stood  for  himself.  The  expression 
of  individuality,  the  multiplication  of  detail, 
the  desire  for  naturalism,  the  study  of  human 
nature  in  every  external  phase,  which  were 
the  keynotes  of  the  Renaissance,  could  not 
be  represented  in  the  general  lines  of  archi 
tecture  or  in  the  unrealistic  forms  of  sculp- 
ture. It  was  a  time  lacking  in  ideals  and 
full  of  a  cynicism  largely  justified  by  preva- 
lent selfishness,  immorality  and  irreligious- 
ness.  Certain  traditional  themes  and  forms 
—  especially  religious  forms  —  held  good 


DE  VEL  OPMENT 


because  they  were  convenient  pegs.  Com- 
pared to  mediaeval  styles  the  religious  archi- 
tecture of  the  Renaissance  is  a  woeful 
failure:  only  in  civil  architecture  was  its 
success  at  all  brilliant.  The  prevalent 
individualism  made  any  unity  of  style 
impossible:  each  prominent  architect  inno- 
vated. The  divorce  from  sculpture  made 
whatever  plastic  ornament  was  used  seem 
artificially  applied  instead  of  an  integral 
growth.  When  the  detailed  work  of  middle 
Renaissance  is  examined,  its  exquisite  fine- 


INTERIOR    OF   RHEIMS    CATHEDRAL. 

ness  of  detail  is  found  to  surpass  that  of 
much  Gothic  work,  but  this  very  fineness  is 
an  error  which  the  Gothic  sculptor  con- 
sciously avoided,  so  as  not  to  weaken  the 
effectiveness  of  the  whole.  In  Italy,  the 
lack  of  organic  union  between  the  general 
and  the  decorative  forms  is  more  conspicu- 
ous than  in  France,  where  the  composition 
was  finer. 

Neither  was  sculpture  the  characteristic 
expression  of  the  Renaissance.  At  the  very 
start  the  attempt  was  made  to  apply  the 


norms  of  painting  to  it:  Ghiberti  tried  pic- 
turesque details  in  his  Baptistery  Gates,  and 
Donatello  attempted  realism  in  his  earlier 
statues.  Gradually  better  principles  pre- 
vailed, but  Renaissance  sculpture  always 
possessed  certain  realistic  pictorial  traits — 
such  as  the  use  and  copying  of  death-masks, 
the  coloring  of  reliefs,  the  attempt  to  repre- 
sent motion  in  action.  There  is  much  charm 
in  the  Florentine  work  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, a  charm  of  presentation,  of  design,  of 
detail,  and  often  of  poetry:  but  there  is  a 
lack  of  force.  The  force  comes  only  with 
Michelangelo,  whose  works  were  like 
thunder  and  lightning  from  a  blue  sky. 

Painting  very  soon  overshadowed  the 
other  arts  in  Italy,  through  its  harmony 
with  the  spirit  of  the  age.  It  was  here  that 
whatever  of  poetry  and  idealism  the  age 
possessed,  as  well  as  its  prevalent  realism 
and  humanism,  found  best  expression.  For 
a  time  religion,  in  a  sentimental  form,  ruled 
in  Siena  and  the  Umbrian  hills — those  Fran- 
ciscan strongholds.  But  the  main  body  of 
the  Florentines,  hard-headed  intellectualists^ 
who  were  really  to  determine  the  march  of 
art,  strove  to  solve  problems  of  perspective, 
to  harmonize  realism  of  detail  with  the  laws 
of  grand  composition,  and  to  make  painting 
a  portrayer  of  human  traits  and  emotions 
which  had  never  before  been  given  repre- 
sentation in  art.  The  late  Greeks  and 
Romans  had  made  sculpture  a  well-nigh 
perfect  medium  for  portraiture.  But  to  the 
Renaissance  color  seemed  an  indispensable 
element.  So,  for  the  first  time  a  distinct 
attempt  at  the  illusion  of  reality  was  made 
in  mere  color.  With  each  new  cycle  art  was 
coming  to  a  more  material  and  imitative 
plane. 

After  the  extravagancies  of  the  barocco 
there  is  no  art  movement  worth  chronicling 
except  that  of  Dutch  realism  and  sundry 
stars  of  great  magnitude  that  emerged  from 
the  waste  places  of  painting — such  as  Velas- 
quez and  Murillo  in  Spain,  Van  Dyck  and 
other  men  in  the  Netherlands.  Painting 
continued  to  be  the  only  art  in  which  any- 
thing worth  chronicling  is  produced.  The 
condition  of  Architecture  and  sculpture 
during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies was  usually  beneath  contempt. 


HAGAR    AND    ISHMAKL. 
By  Jean-Charles  Cazin,  in  the  Luxemburg,  Parts.    An  example  of  tone.-See  lesson  /j. 


THE    HOUNDS    OF   ASSOURBANIPAL. 
Relief  in  the  British  Museum.    Seep.  150. 


Pre-Greek   Art. 


BY 


JOHN  PICKARD,  A.M.,  Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR   OF    CLASSICAL   ARCHEOLOGY   AND   HISTORY   OF   ART,    UNIVERSITY    OF   MISSOURI. 


EGYPTIAN  ART.  (21) 
In  the  brief  space  allotted  in  this 
history  to  the   great   field   of  Pre- 
Greek  art  it  seems  wise  to  limit  the 
discussion  to  the  art  of  those  nations  whose 
artistic  influence  on  later  times  appears  to 
have   been   greatest.      Therefore    we    shall 
consider:     i.   Egyptian  art,  2.   Chaldaeo- As- 
syrian, and  3.   Phoenician  art. 

Egyptian  architecture  and  sculpture  had 
two  great  creative  periods,  that  of  the  Mem- 
phite  Kings  of  the  "Ancient  Empire," 
dynasties  iii-v,  from  4449  B.  C.  to  3703  B.  C. 
(Mariette's  chronology  is  followed),  and  that 


of  dynasties  xviii-xx,  1703  B.  C.  to  mo  B. 
C. ,  the  time  of  the  glory  of  the  second  The- 
ban  Kingdom,  in  the  period  of  the  "New 
Empire.'"  Throughout  the  rest  of  her  his- 
tory the  art  of  Egypt  was  content  for  the 
most  part  to  refine  upon,  to  alter,  to  conven- 
tionalize the  forms  then  created.  For  though 
the  country  was  repeatedly  conquered  and 
held  in  bondage — sometimes  for  centuries — 
by  strangers,  the  art  of  Egypt  conquered 
her  conquerors,  and  from  the  days  of  Cheops 
to  the  age  of  the  Mohammedans  in  Egypt  the 
art  of  the  country  was  essentially  national. 
Painting  never  arose  to  the  dignity  of  an 
independent  art  in  Egypt.  But  Egyptian 


142 


PRE- GREEK  ART. 


reliefs  were  always,  and  Egyptian  statuary 
was  usually,  covered  with  paint  laid  on  in 
unmixed  flat  tints,  conventional  in  color  and 
altogether  lacking  in  light  and  shade,  per- 
spective, and  modeling.  Painting  on  a  flat 
surface  was  equally  conventional  and  unnat- 
ural. The  human  figure,  animals,  buildings, 
and  landscapes  are  represented  with  a  total 
lack  of  what  we  call  pictorial  effect.  Yet 
from  these  brilliantly  -  colored  reliefs  and 
paintings  vivid  pictures  of  the  every-day  life 
of  ancient  Egypt  may  be  obtained. 

The  sculptor's  art  also  covered  the  walls 
of  the  early  tombs  with  illustrations  of  the 
daily  life  of  the  people.  In  the  sepulchres 
of  the  "New  Empire"  the  scenes  of  the 
"Book  of  the  Dead"  became  common,  and 
the  gods  appear  in  judgment  or  to  render 
aid  to  just  souls.  On  the  other  hand  temple 
walls,  pillar^,  columns,  capitals — the  entire 
structure  within  and  without  was  filled  with 
representations  of  the  life  of  the  king,  his  con- 
quests, his  hunting,  his  acts  of  devotion,  his 
communion  with  the  gods,  his  fathers.  The 
tombs  were  filled  with  statues  of  Pharaohs, 
scribes,  public  functionaries,  all  being  por- 
trait statues.  Colossal  figures  were  erected 
before  the  great  temple  pylons,  or  sculp- 
tured in  the  fagades  of  rock-cut  temples. 
Statues  of  the  gods  were  placed  within  the 
sanctuaries,  and  with  those  of  kings  and  the 
great  of  the  land  were  used  as  votive  offer- 
ings. The  temple  and  the  tomb  were 
responsible  for  the  great  mass  of  Egyptian 
sculptures. 

The  sculptor  worked  in  wood,  in  lime- 
stone, sandstone,  alabaster,  granite,  basalt, 
porphyry,  diorite,  in  ivory,  ebony,  iron,  gold, 
silver,  and  bronze.  These  materials,  the 
soft  alabaster  or  the  hard  basalt,  were 
handled  with  equal  care  and  skill,  and  the 
superb  workmanship  of  some  of  these  most 
obdurate  materials  may  be  reckoned  among 
the  technical  marvels  of  the  ages. 

The  Ancient  Empire.  —  For  the  ancient 
Egyptian  this  life  and  all  that  pertains 
thereto  were  but  the  things  of  a  day  in  com- 
parison with  that  life  eternal  which  was  so 
soon  to  commence.  As  soon  as  he  arrived 
at  man's  estate  he  began  work  on  his  tomb, 
that  which  was  to  be  his  "eternal  home." 
For  his  ka,  that  mysterious  spiritual  double 


of  his  mortal  self,  could  be  kept  from  utter 
dissolution  only  by  the  preservation  of  his 
mortal  body  or  of  some  sculptured  image  of 
that  body. 

The  mastaba,  the  private  tomb  of  the 
ancient  empire,  consisted  in  its  complete 
state,  above  ground,  of  a  quandrangular 
mass  of  masonry,  with  sides  sloping  in  like 
a  truncated  obelisk,  whose  ground  plan  va- 
ried in  area  from  170x86  feet  to  26x20  feet, 
and  whose  height  varied  from  30  feet  to  13 
feet.  A  pit  pierced  the  solid  mass  of  the 
structure  perpendicularly  from  above,  ex- 
tending from  40  to  80  feet  into  the  earth 
and  led  to  the  real  mortuary  chamber  where 
the  mummified  body  was  placed  in  a  sar- 
cophagus. After  the  body  was  thus  laid 
away  the  pit  was  filled  up  and  the  entrance 
was  concealed.  The  massive  structure 
above  ground  contained  two  chambers,  the 
one,  the  chamber  of  offerings,  open  to  all  who 
chose  to  come,  the  other,  the  serdab,  either 
hermetically  sealed  in  the  mass  of  masonry 
or  connected  by  a  slight  crevice  with  the 
chamber  of  offerings.  Within  the  serdab 
were  placed  the  portrait  statues  of  the  de- 
ceased. Probably  nine-tenths  of  the  statues 
from  the  Ancient  Empire  which  we  possess 
came  from  these  serdabs.  Their  theory, 
then,  is  simple.  That  the  ka  might  live,  the 
body  was  embalmed.  But  an  enemy  might 
destroy  it.  So  it  was  concealed  in  the  mor- 
tuary chamber.  Embalming  in  those  early 
days  was  imperfect,  and  the  body  still  might 
decay.  Therefore  the  serdab  was  filled  with 
portrait  statues,  for  to  these  the  ka  might 
cling  and  live.  To  the  chamber  of  offerings 
friends  could  come,  there  to  place  food  and 
drink  whose  sweet  savor  would  penetrate 
through  the  crevice  of  the  serdab  and  give 
shadowy  life  and  vigor  to  the  shade  of  the 
departed. 

This,  then,  was  the  tomb  of  the  noble. 
The  pyramid  was  the  tomb  of  the  king,  but 
when  compared  with  the  mastaba,  not  the 
whole  tomb.  The  side  of  the  square  base  of 
the  great  pyramid  of  Cheops  measured  755 
feet  8  inches ;  the  height  was  48 1  feet  4  inches, 
and  its  base  covers  more  than  13  acres.  Yet 
this  corresponds  only  to  the  pit  and  the  mor- 
tuary chamber  of  the  mastaba.  The  body  of 
the  king  was  laid  away  in  the  chamber  in  the 


PRE-GREEK  ART. 


143 


heart  of  the  pyramid.  The  inclined  passage 
leading  to  this  was  but  an  adaptation  of  the 
pit  of  the  more  humble  tomb.  The  king's 
chamber  of  offerings  was  the  temple  placed 
opposite  the  east  side  of  the  pyramid,  and 
there  perchance  were  placed  the  funereal 
statues  of  the  royal  owner  of  this  great 
"eternal  home."  These  wonderful  stone 
mountains  at  Gizeh  (p.  78)  are  but  three  out 
of  more  than  a  hundred  pyramids  known  to 
exist  in  Egypt.  They  vary  from  481  to  50 
feet  in  height,  for  the  size  of  the  pyramid  is 
the  index  of  the  length  of  the  reign  of  the 
king.  The  passageway  leading  to  the  mor- 
tuary chamber  of  the  great  pyramid  is  lined 
with  polished  granite,  so  perfectly  fitted 
that  the  joints  almost  defy  detection 
The  roof  of  the  chamber  itself  is  in- 
geniously contrived  to  support 
the  enormous  superincumbent 
weight.  The  exterior  of  the 
pyramid  was  originally  cov- 
ered from  apex  to  base 
with  a  smoothly  -  slop 
ing  surface  of  polished 
stone,  perchance 
a  huge 
mosaic  in 
variegated 
colors. 

No    temples 

of  the  Ancient  Empire  are 
sufficiently  preserved  to  make 
their  discussion  here  of  interest. 

Contemporary  with  the  great 
pyramids  is  the  wooden  statue 
of  Ra-em-ka,  the  Sheikh-el-Beled  (see  p. 
32),  as  he  was  called  by  the  Arab  work- 
men who  saw  his  resemblance  to  the  chief 
of  their  own  village.  Originally  the  wood 
was  covered  with  linen,  painted,  undoubt- 
edly of  a  reddish  brown  tint,  the  usual 
color  for  the  flesh  of  men,  while  that  of 
women  was  tinted  yellow.  "The  eyeballs 
are  of  opaq  ue  white  quartz  set  in  a  bronze 
sheath  which  forms  the  eyelids.  In  the 
center  of  each  is  a  bit  of  rock  crystal,  and 
behind  this  a  shining  nail."  To  dynasty  v 
or  vi  belongs  the  famous  Scribe  now  in  the 
Louvre,  made  of  limestone  and  still  preserv- 
ing its  reddish  brown  color.  The  eyes, 
made  like  those  of  the  Sheikh-el-Beled,  the 


exactness  of  the  posture,  still  common  in 
the  East,  the  accurate  characterization  of 
form,  of  muscles,  and  of  flesh,  make  this  a 
marvel  of  realism.  Other  similar  figures 
are  found  in  this  period,  but  examples  of 
such  excellence  are  rare  indeed,  and  never 
later  did  Egyptian  art  copy  nature  so  faith- 
fully. As  early  as  the  iv  dynasty  (4235  B. 
C.)  belongs  the  great  Sphinx  (see  p.  78),  a 
figure  of  the  Sun  God,  150  feet  long,  70  feet 
high,  with  the  body  of  a  lion  and  the  head 
of  a  man.  The  beard  has  been  destroyed, 
the  lower  portion  of  the  headdress  is  gone, 
the  face  has  been  mutilated,  the  body  been 
reduced  to  an  almost  shapeless  mass  ;  yet  it 
stands  to-day  an  embodiment  of  the 
greatness,  the  power,  the  mystery  of 
Egypt,  perhaps  the  face  of  loftiest 
ideality  that  art  ever  produced  by 
the  banks  of  the  Nile. 

These,  then,  are  some  of  the 
finest  works  of  the  Ancient 
Empire.     They  represent 
^        not   the  beginning  but 

cen" 


SECTION    OF    THE    PYRAMID    OF 
CHEOPS. 


turies  of  develop- 
ment,    cen- 
turies of 
which    we 
know  practi- 
cally nothing.       For 
the  veil  that  shuts  us  off  from 
the  dawn  of  Egyptian  civiliza- 
tion  has   not   yet   been  drawn 
aside.     We   do  not  even  know 
whether  that  far  off  beginning 
was  made  in  Egypt  or  elsewhere. 


EGYPTIAN  ART— Continued.  (22} 
The  duration  of  the  Middle  Empire, 
Dynasties  xi — xvm  was  from  B.C. 
3064  to  B.C.  1703.    The  renaissance 
of  art,  begun  under  the  early  dynasties  of 
this  period,  was  interrupted  by  the  invasion 
of  the  Hyksos.     The  only  monuments  that 
need  detain  us  are    the   rock-cut  tombs  of 
Beni-Hassan.       These    are    interesting   be- 
cause precursors  of  the  great  rock-cut  tombs 
of  the  New  Empire,  and  because  their  fa- 
gades  are  decorated  with  the  so-called  proto- 


144 


PRE- GREEK  ART. 


Doric  columns  cut  in  the  living  rock, 
supposed  by  some  scholars  to  be  the  original 
model  of  the  oldest  Grecian  order  of  archi- 
tecture. 

The  New  Empire,  dynasties  xviii-xxxi, 
extended  from  B.  C.  1703  to  B.  C.  332.  The 
glorious  conquering  age  of  Egypt  was  that 
of  dynasties  xviii-xx  (1703  B.  C.  to  mo  B. 


HYPOSTYLE  HALL  IN  THE  TEMPLE  OF  AMON  AT  KARNAK. 


C.),  the  age  of  Seti  and  of  Rameses,  the 
time  of  the  Second  Theban  Kingdom,  the 
era  of  the  great  temple  builders,  and  of 
the  vast  tombs  excavated  in  the  flanks 
of  the  Libyan  mountains  to  the  west 
of  Thebes. 

Cut  from  the  solid  rock,  the  tombs  hardly 
yield  to  the  greatest  of  the  pyramids  in  the 


magnitude  of  the  labor  required.  The 
longest  extends  865  feet  into  the  heart  of 
the  mountain.  That  of  Rameses  III.  is  420 
feet  long. 

But  the  elegance  and  minuteness  of  their 
ornamentation  is  even  more  surprising.     In 
the  tombs  of  Seti  and  of  Rameses  III.,  for 
example,  there  is  no  portion  of  the  surface 
of  pillars,  walls,  or  ceil- 
ings, which  is  not  cov- 
ered   with    figures     or 
designs   in   painting  or 
relief   marvelously  exe- 
cuted.   The    private 
tombs  of  this  class  had 
their    chambers    for 
offerings,     their     place 
for     funereal     statues, 
their  pits  and  mortuary 
chambers  like  the  mas- 
tabas   of   old.      But  the 
vast  rock-cut   corridors 
and    chambers    of    the 
royal    tombs    with     all 
their    wealth    of    orna- 
ment were  destined  to 
be   closed    and    hidden 
from     human    eyes    so 
soon  as  the  royal  mum- 
my   should    be    placed 
therein.     The   chamber 
of  offerings,  the  repos- 
itory of  statues  for  the 
king,    were    such    tem- 
ples as  the  Ramesseum 
and    the   Amenopheum 
on  the  left  bank  of  the 
Nile    at   Thebes.     The 
later  period  of  the  New 
Empire,    when    Sais    in 
the    Delta    became    the 
capital  of  the  kingdom, 
has  little  that  is  new  or 
interesting    to    offer   in 

funereal  architecture.  For  in  the  Delta 
there  were  no  mountains,  and  the  age  of 
pyramid  building  had  long  since  passed 
away.  So  kings  were  buried  in  the  sacred 
enclosures  of  the  temples.  The  mummies 
of  their  subjects  were  placed  in  sarcophagi 
on  the  tops  of  artificial  hills  elevated  suffi- 
ciently to  escape  the  waters  of  the  inunda- 


PRE-GREEK  ART. 


145 


tions  of  the  river.  The  sarcophagi  of  the 
later  burial  were  placed  above  those  of  the 
earlier,  so  that  the  elevation  grew  in  height 
with  the  passing  of  generations. 

The  greatest  of  Egyptian  temples  is  that 
of  Karnak,  "perhaps  the  noblest  effort  of 
architectural  magnificence  ever  produced  by 
the  hand  of  man."  It  is  1,200  feet  long  by 
about  360  feet  in  breadth.  Passing  through 
the  double  file  of  sphinxes  that  as  usual  lined 
both  sides  of  the  approaches  to  an  Egyptian 
temple,  the  visitor  entered  at  the  gigantic 
pylon,  a  gateway  with  flanking  towers  145 
feet  high.  From  the  open  court  thus 
reached  he  passed  into  the  great  Hypostyle, 
the  marvel  of  Karnak.  This  is  a  hall  170 
feet  deep  by  360  feet  broad.  The  twelve 
columns  that  support  the  clerestory  are 
nearly  seventy  feet  high,  "undoubtedly  the 
largest  columns  ever  employed  in  the  inte- 
rior of  an  edifice."  A  hundred  and  twenty- 
two,  a  veritable  forest  of  immense  columns, 
supported  the  remainder  of  the  roof.  "The 
total  effect  of  this  colossal  piece  of  archi- 
tecture, even  in  its  ruin,  is  one  of  over- 


STATUE   OF    RAMESES    II. 
In  the  Turin  Museum.     Granite. 


whelming  majesty.  No  other  work  of  human 
hands  strikes  the  beholder  with  such  a  sense 
of  awe."  From  this  chamber  the  traveler 
passes  on  to  the  innermost  portions  of  the 
sanctuary,  where  were  situated  the  holy  of 
holies,  and  many  other  chambers  the  pur- 
pose of  which  is  no  longer  clear. 

We  may  judge  of  the  appearance  of  such 
a  temple  by  examination  of  a  Chipiez  resto- 
ration of  the  great  temple  of  Luxor. 

The  massive  sloping  towers  of  the  three 
great  pylons  or  gateways,  the  four  seated 
colossi  of  Rameses  II. — under  whom  the 
temple  was  completed — the  two  obelisks 
overtopping  the  front  pylon,  the  avenue  of 
sphinxes,  and  the  diminishing  height  of  the 
various  members  of  the  structure  from  front 
to  rear,  are  all  characteristic  of  the  Egyptian 
temple,  not  merely  in  the  xix  dynasty,  but 
throughout  the  successive  domination  of 
Persian,  Macedonian,  Greek,  and  Roman. 

Nothing  like  the  Greek  symmetry  pre- 
vailed in  the  Egyptian  column.  It  tapered 
variously,  and  the  relation  of  diameter  to 
height  was  variant.  Capitals  were  of  two 
varieties:  the  campaniform,  an  inverted  bell 
shape,  probably  derived  from  the  lotus  flower, 
and  the  lotiform,  derived  from  the  lotus  bud. 

At  the  same  time  that  Rameses  was  build- 
ing the  great  pylon  before  the  temple  at 
Luxor  there  were  being  constructed  the 
famous  rock-cut  temples  of  Ipsamboul,  in 
Nubia.  These  and  similar  structures  in 
Upper  Egypt  copied  in  their  rock-cut  cham- 
bers the  essential  features  of  ordinary  tem- 
ples. The  front  of  the  Ipsamboul  temple 
is  adorned  with  the  largest  seated  colossi 
in  Egypt,  70  feet  in  height,  being  portraits 
of  Rameses  the  Great.  With  the  second 
Theban  Kingdom  came  the  second  great 
period  of  sculpture  also.  The  great  pylons 
and  the  rock-cut  tombs  required  their  seated 
colossi;  the  walls  of  the  tombs,  the  walls — 
both  within  and  without — of  the  temples 
demanded  a  multitude  of  sculptors  to  cover 
them  with  reliefs  and  of  painters  to  color 
them.  Funereal  statues,  votive  statues, 
statues  of  divinities  in  countless  numbers 
must  be  provided.  The  conquests  of  Seti 
and  of  Rameses  must  be  commemorated. 
These  same  conquests  brought  wealth  and 
luxury.  Throughout  the  length  and  breadth 


1 46 


PRE- GREEK  ART. 


In  Egypt  architecture  held  ever  the  prin- 
cipal place.  Painting  and  sculpture  were 
subordinate  arts.  Apparently  they  never 
carved  a  figure  or  made  a  painting  simply 
for  the  sake  of  beauty.  Yet  Egyptian 
buildings  are  in  general  simply  agglomera- 
tions. To  their  temples  any  king  could  add 
a  hall  or  a  pylon.  There  was  no  unity  of 
plan,  no  law  of  measure  or  of  proportion. 

Egyptian  sculpture  is  remarkable  for  its 
realism,  but  still  more  for  its  generalizations 
and  its  conventions.  It  has  hardly  been 
excelled  in  the  power  of  seizing  salient  char- 
acteristics, whether  ethnical  or  individual, 
and  of  representing  them  in  connection  with 
the  most  rigid  conventions.  In  Egyptian 
statues  there  is  little  variety  of  pose  or  of 
expression.  There  is  little  indeed  of  the 
poetic,  of  the  lofty  idealistic.  Their  gods 
were  individualized,  not  by  the  intellectual 
and  spiritual  qualities  of  an  Apollo  or  an 
Athena,  but  by.  the  brutish  attributes  of  a 
Sekhet  or  a  Horus. 


SETI    I. 
A  bas-relief  in  the  temple  at  Abydos. 


of  the  land  the  lust  for  building  raged.  We 
no  longer  find  the  vigorous  naturalism  of  the 
time  of  the  Ancient  Empire.  The  figures 
become  more  slender,  the  adornment  more 
rich,  crowns  more  elaborate,  and  richly 
ornamented  garments  are  not  uncommon. 
That  art  could  still  be  very  expressive  may 
be  seen  from  the  head  of  Queen  Taia.  That 
tinusnal  refinement  and  grace  were  united 
with  curious  conventionality  in  form  and  in 
face  we  learn  from  the  beautiful  relief  of 
Seti  I.  Yet  the  vast  walls  of  the  great  tem- 
ples made  such  demands  on  the  sculptors 
that  even  in  the  time  of  the  great  Rameses 
we  find  evidences  of  poverty  of  invention 
and  carelessness  of  execution,  and  the  begin- 
ning of  the  decline  may  be  dated  from  his 
reign.  In  the  changes  of  government  dur- 
ing the  Libyan  and  Ethiopian  dynasties  art 
was  at  a  low  ebb.  The  Saite  kings  of  the 
seventh  and  sixth  centuries  B.  C.  brought 
about  a  revival  which  sometimes  was  con- 
tent with  the  simple  copying  of  the  work  of 
previous  ages;  sometimes,  however,  pro- 
duced works  of  rare  power. 


THE    QUEEN    TAIA. 
In  the  Boulak  Afitsfum,  Cairo. 


Yet  their  buildings  speak  to  us  of  eternity, 
and  their  sphinx  and  the  colossal  figures  of 
their  kings  are  filled  with  inscrutable,  in- 
comprehensible, godlike  serenity. 


PRE-GREEK  ART. 


c 


HALDAEO- ASSYRIAN      ART. 


It  is  still  doubtful  whether  Egypt 
or  Chaldaea,  the  banks  of  the 
Nile  or  the  fertile  plains  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Tigris  and  the  Euphrates  gave  birth  to 
the  earliest  civilization;  but  in  these  two 
countries  we  find  the  first  traces  indicative 
of  the  emergence  of  our  race  from  barbar- 
ism. From  these  countries  went  forth  the 
vitalizing  influences  that  first  penetrated  all 
sections  of  Western  Asia  and  then  were 
transmitted  through  the  classic  lands  for  the 
upbuilding  of  mediaeval  and  modern  times. 
In  Egypt  there  was  more  of  calm,  of  refine- 
ment, of  grace ;  in  Assyria  greater  energy, 
motion,  force.  Egypt  was  the  more  artistic; 
Chaldaea  the  more  learned.  So  far  as  we 
know  they  were  independent  sources  unin- 
fluenced by  other  nations  or  by  each  other. 

In  spite  of  the  labors  of  Botta  at  Khor- 
sabad  (1843),  of  Layard  at  Nineveh  and  at 
Nimroud  (1845-1851),  of  Place  at  Khorsabad 
(1851-1855),  of  De  Sarzac,  of  Rassam,  of 
Loftus,  of  Smith,  and  last,  but  by  no  means 
least,  of  Peters,  Haynes  and  others,  under 
the  auspices  of  the  University  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, at  Nippur  and  elsewhere  (1890 ) 

— to  mention  only  some  of  the  more  impor- 
tant excavators  and  excavations  —  we  are 
much  less  well  informed  of  the  art  of  Meso- 
potamia than  we  are  of  that  of  Egypt. 

This  is  due  in  part  to  the  different  mate- 
rials used  in  the  two  countries.  Egypt  pos- 
sessed and  used  stone  in  abundance  and  in 
variety.  In  Chaldaea  stone  of  any  kind 
was  lacking.  So,  while  we  do  find  ancient 
Chaldean  statuary  of  imported  diorite  and 
basalt,  the  material  generally  employed  by 
the  Chaldaeans  was  clay.  Sun-dried  bricks 
formed  the  mass  of  their  structures.  Kiln- 
baked  bricks  were  used  for  facings,  for 
arches,  for  those  places  requiring  strength. 
Enameled  bricks  and  terra  cotta  plates  were 
employed  for  ornamentation. 

The  Assyrians,  though  possessing  excellent 
building  stone,  limestone  and  alabaster,  used 
these  sparingly,  the  first  mainly  for  facings, 
the  second  for  sculpture.  For  Assyria  was 
the  inheritor  and  the  imitator  of  the  science, 
the  religion,  the  art,  and  civilization  of  Chal- 


dea,  the  older  nation  that  dwelt  lower  down 
on  the  banks  of  the  great  rivers. 

Sun-dried  bricks  then  were  responsible  for 
the  speedy  destruction  of  Chaldaean  and 
Assyrian  cities;  and  also  for  the  fine  state  of 
preservation  in  which  some  of  their  contents 
have  come  down  to  us.  The  plains  of  Mes- 
opotamia are  dotted  with  mounds,  covering 
the  sites  of  ancient  cities,  that  await  the 
coming  of  the  spade  to  disclose,  perchance, 
new  marvels  of  that  civilization  which  was 
old  centuries  before  Abraham  came  forth 
from  Ur  of  the  Chaldees. 

The  doctrine  of  demonology  has  rarely  in 
the  history  of  the  world  been  developed  so 
fully  or  been  believed  in  more  implicitly 
than  by  the  Chaldaeans.  For  them  the  air 
was  full  of  contending  armies  of  evil  and  of 
beneficent  spirits.  Their  lives  were  pre- 
occupied with  plans  to  conjure  or  to  combat 
the  machinations  of  the  evil  ones.  For  this 
purpose  they  recited  incantations;  they  hung 
up  and  buried  statuettes  and  reliefs.  To 
ward  off  the  dreaded  southwest  wind,  for 
example,  they  hung  up  his  own  image — so 
ugly  that  he  might  well  flee  from  it.  To 
propitiate  the  powers  of  good  they  placed  at 
the  gates  of  their  cities  and  palaces  the 
great  winged  man-headed  bulls — symbols  of 
force  that  thinks  —  which  are  among  the 
most  splendid  creations  of  Assyrian  art. 
Their  religion  did  not  demand  that  the 
bodies  of  the  dead  be  preserved  for  eternity. 
So  we  find  no  giant  pyramid  tombs  and  no 
rock-cut  galleries  for  the  eternal  home  of 
their  great  ones.  They  thought  of  the 
heavens  as  a  metal  dome  whose  base  rested 
on  the  circumference  of  the  world,  and  of 
the  earth  as  a  "stepped"  pyramid  rising 
beneath  this  dome.  So  they  strove  to  build 
temples  whose  tops  should  mount  heaven- 
ward in  the  same  manner.  The  greatness 
of  the  king  overshadowed  all  the  land,  and 
each  monarch  strove  to  build  at  least  one 
palace  where  he  might  dwell  at  ease  looking 
upon  walls  ornamented  with  long  lines  of 
sculptured  slabs  on  which  were  recorded  the 
pictured  stories  of  his  glorious  deeds  in  war, 
and  of  his  prowess  in  the  chase. 

Therefore  we  have  in  architecture  the 
remains  of  Assyrian  and  Chaldaean  temples 
and  palaces;  in  sculpture  divinities  and  the 


i43 


PRE- GREEK  ART. 


stories  of  kings.  Painting,  as  in  Egypt,  has 
no  separate  existence,  but  is  the  handmaid 
of  architecture  and  sculpture. 

As  the  best  available  example,  and  one 
typical  of  the  Chaldaeo  -  Assyrian  palace  in 
general,  we  take  that  of  Sargon  at  Khorsa- 
bad,  erected  between  712  and  707  B.  C. 

This  was  built  on  an  artificial  platform  of 
earth,  more  than  1,000  by  1,200  feet  in  area, 
raised,  as  was  customary,  some  thirty  feet 
above  the  level  of  the  plain.  This  palace 
base  was  protected  on  every  side  by  a  sup- 
porting wall  cased  with  stone  of  very  beauti- 
ful masonry.  Ascending  the  steps  leading 
from  the  city,  one  entered  through  a  mag- 
nificent portal. 

The  pair  of  colossal  man-headed  bulls 
arranged  on  either  side  of  the  passage  were 
19  feet  high.  The  four  smaller  ones  meas- 
ured 15  feet.  Between  each  pair  of  these 
last  mentioned  stood  the  giant  figure  of 
Isdubar,  the  Assyrian  Herakles,  strangling 
a  lion.  This  entrance  led  into  the  great 
court,  315  by  280  feet  in  size.  Here  was  the 
business  portion  of  the  great  edifice;  for 
it  was  surrounded  on  three  sides  with  store 
rooms  of  various  kinds.  Beyond  these  at 
the  right  were  the  servants'  quarters,  the 
work  rooms,  and  the  stables  of  the  palace. 
At  the  left,  beyond  the  line  of  store  rooms 
was  the  harem.  Directly  opposite  the  great 
entrance  to  the  court  were  the  private  apart- 
ments of  the  king.  Beyond  these  again 
were  the  State  apartments.  Two  hundred 
and  nine  apartments,  great  and  small,  many 
of  which  were  as  large  as  130  by  40  feet,  were 
comprised  within  the  walls  of  this  vast 
structure.  Room  enough,  it  would  seem, 
for  the  accommodation  of  the  suite  of  even 
an  Oriental  despot.  The  thickness  of  the 
walls  was  often  nearly  as  great  as  the  width 
of  the  rooms  they  enclosed.  We  read  of 
such  walls,  15,  20  and  30  feet  thick.  They 
were  constructed  of  unbaked  bricks  laid 
without  mortar  before  they  were  fairly  dry. 
They  had  to  support  heavy  earthen  roofs, 
either  flat  or  vaulted,  made  several  feet 
thick  so  as  to  exclude  both  the  rain  and  the 
heat.  These  roofs  and  walls,  resolved  by 
the  action  of  the  elements  into  their  original 
constituents,  have  supplied  the  larger  por- 
tion of  the  material  in  which  these  huge 


structures  lie  buried.  City  walls  also  were 
constructed  in  a  similar  manner.  It  used  to 
sound  fabulous  when  we  were  told  that 
several  chariots  could  drive  abreast  on  the 
summit  of  the  walls  of  Babylon.  But  on 
the  walls  of  this  city  of  Sargon,  60  feet  high, 
seven  chariots  could  readily  drive  side  by 
side. 

The  splendid  State  apartments  were  wain- 
scoted inside  and  out,  with  great  sculptured 
slabs  of  alabaster,  often  more  than  9  feet 
high.  From  these  and  from  similar  palace 
walls,  in  fact,  comes  the  main  portion  of  the 
sculpture  that  now  fills  the  Assyrian  rooms 
of  our  museums.  This  palace  of  Sargon 
alone  has  yielded  twenty-four  pairs  of  colos- 
sal bulls  in  high  relief,  and  the  sculptural 
slabs  from  thence  placed  in  position  side  by 
side  would  decorate  two  miles  of  wall.  The 
sculpture  of  Assyria  was  nearly  always  in 
the  form  of  reliefs. 

Enormous  as  was  this  palace,  it  was  easily 
surpassed  in  size  by  others.  That  of  Sen- 
nacherib at  Nineveh  covered  more  than 
twenty  acres.  All  apparently  were  divided 
like  that  of  Sargon,  into  three  portions,  the 
serail  comprising  the  royal  chambers  and 
the  State  apartments,  the  harem  for  the 
women  and  children,  the  khan  for  the  serv- 
ants, kitchens,  store  rooms  and  stables. 

To  the  left  of  the  king's  private  apart- 
ments in  Sargon's  palace  was  placed  the 
pyramidal  Ziggurat,  the  temple  of  the  seven 
celestial  deities.  This  arose  135  feet  above 
the  level  of  the  temple  platform.  Strabo 
tells  us  that  the  great  temple  of  Bel  at 
Babylon  was  more  than  600  feet  high.  Such 
was  the  usual  plan  of  a  Chaldaean  or 
Assyrian  temple.  The  solid  mass  of  sun- 
dried  brick  towered  high  above  the  one- 
storied  palace  as  its  base.  It  was  ascended 
by  an  inclined  plane  winding  about  the  four 
sides  of  the  structure  and  leading  up  to  the 
holy  of  holies  on  the  apex.  This  has  also 
been  well  named  an  observatory.  For  we 
must  remember  that  these  ancient  peoples 
worshiped  the  heavenly  bodies,  and  our 
science  of  the  stars  dates  from  the  Chaldaean 
astronomers.  Sometimes  the  sacred  struc- 
ture was  built  of  successive  stories,  masses 
of  brick,  placed  one  above  the  other,  with 
flights  of  steps  leading  upwards. 


PRE- GREEK  ART. 


149 


Such  are  the  principal  structures 
whose  remains  have  come  down  to  us. 
The  unbaked  bricks,  however,  were 
never  left  exposed.  Where  the  pro- 
tection of  sculptured  slabs  was  lacking, 
the  walls  were  covered  with  stucco, 
sometimes  tinted  in  solid  colors,  some- 
times painted  in  conventional  patterns, 
sometimes  covered  with  what  might  be 
called  imitation  reliefs  in  color.  There 
was  apparently  little  opportunity  here 
for  columns,  architrave,  and  all  the 
rich  details  of  classic  architecture.  Still 
we  are  not  without  indications  that  the 
Ionic  column  was  Assyrian,  if  indeed 
not  Chaldaean  in  origin. 

These  royal  structures  in  the  valley 
of  the  Tigris,  reared  at  such  vast  outlay  of 
labor,  gorgeous   in   their   Oriental   coloring 
must  have  been  among  the  most  impressive 
buildings  of  the  world. 

In  spite  of  the  light  derived  from  the 
study  of  cylinder  impressions,  gems,  and 
statuettes,  our  knowledge  of  Chaldaean  sculp- 
ture is  most  insufficient.  As  early  as  3800 
B.  C. ,  sculptors  possessed  all  technical  skill. 
De  Sarzac's  excavations  at  Tello  (Largash) 
gave  to  us  the  finest  Chaldaean  statuary  we 
possess,  from  3,000  B.  C.  The  excessively 
hard  material  (diorite)  is  handled  with  much 
skill.  The  figures,  unlike  Assyrian  statues, 


I'RIEST    INTRODUCING   VOTARIES    TO    SHAMASH,  THE    SUN-GOD,  IN   HIS 

SHRINK. 

A  tablet  from  Sippara.    Notice  the  Ionic  like  column. 


RECTANGULAR    CHALDAEAN    TEMPLE. 
Restored  by  Ch.   Chipiez. 


are  worked  carefully  in  the  back  as  well  as 
on  the  front.  The  surfaces  are  too  round, 
there  is  lack  of  detail,  yet  the  forms  are  well 
rendered.  There  is  some  appreciation  of 
the  manner  in  which  folds  are  formed  in 
drapery,  and  the  treatment  of  the  eyes, 
cheeks  and  mouth  is  surprisingly  good. 
Surely  this  "School  of  Largash"  did  not 
exist  alone  in  Chaldaea,  and  the  spade  has 
still  much  to  teach  us  of  the  sculpture  of  this 
ancient  people. 

The  jump  from  Chaldaean  sculpture  of  the 
thirtieth  century  B.  C.  to  Assyrians  of  the 
ninth  century  B.  C.,  is  a  long  one.  But 
there  is  not  much  between  to 
give  us  pause  in  this  brief 
sketch.  For  the  first  great 
period  of  Assyrian  sculpture 
fell  in  the  reign  of  Assournazir- 
pal,  885-860  B.  C.,  and  under 
him  Assyrian  sculpture  attained 
nearly  its  highest  point.  Be- 
tween his  reign  and  that  of 
Assourbanipal,  668  B.  C.,  dur- 
ing the  centuries  of  the  glory 
of  Assyria,  the  essential  char- 
acteristics of  the  sculpture  re- 
main the  same.  But  there  were 
decided  changes  in  certain 
methods,  details  of  represen- 
tation. 

One  relief  portrays  Assour- 
nazirpal  with  a  eunuch  standing 
before  him,  in  the  act  of  pour- 
ing a  libation.  The  figures  are 


PRE-GREEK  ART. 


of  great  dignity,  the  Semitic  features  are 
beyond  question,  the  robes  are  sumptuous, 
but  the  muscles  of  the  arm  are  rendered  with 
great  inaccuracy,  and  gross  exaggeration. 
The  heavy  garments  show  no  trace  of  the 
outline  of  the  form  beneath.  The  treatment 
of  the  beard  and  hair  is  curiously  suggestive 
of  tapestry  work.  The  eyes  in  full  front 
with  the  face  in  profile,  the  shoulders  in 


ASSOURNAZIRPAL    OFFERING   A   LIBATION. 
A  Relief  in  the  British  Museum. 


three  fourths  profile  with  the  lower  body  in 
full  profile  present  conventions  common  also 
to  Egyptian  and  early  Greek  reliefs.  The 
faces  are  singularly  devoid  of  expression. 
The  cuneiform  inscription  extending  across 
the  bodies  only  emphasizes  the  fact  that  this 
is  a  story  telling  art.  It  is  not  demanded  of 
the  artist  here  that  he  shall  imitate  nature, 
or  produce  beautiful  forms.  It  is  his  busi- 
ness to  place  upon  the  walls  of  the  palace 
the  history  of  the  famous  deeds  of  the  king. 
He  has  great  technical  skill.  His  eye  is 


true,  his  hand  is  sure.  He  reproduces  in 
the  soft  alabaster  every  detail  of  dress  or  of 
form  that  he  desires  to  copy,  in  exactly  the 
manner  he  wishes.  This  is  not  the  art  of 
beginners.  Only  long  training  could  pro- 
duce such  skill. 

If  we  turn  now  to  the  reign   of  Assour- 
banipal   (668  B.    C.),   we   see   the   monarch 
upon   his   chariot.      Here    there    is   greater 
richness  of   decoration.    The  faces  are 
softer,    more    effeminate,    the  pose   is 
easier,  the  profile  of  the  body  is  more 
strictly  observed.    The  muscles  are  less 
exaggerated.     But    the    same    conven- 
tions of  form,  eyes,  hair,  garments,  are 
found  as  in  the  preceding  case.     The  ar- 
tist has  not  progressed  in  his  knowledge 
of  the   human  figure  or  in  his  ability 
to  represent  it.      He  remains  as  rigidly 
bound    by    his   conventions    as    were 
the  later  Egyptian  sculptors  by  those 
prevailing  on   the  banks  of  the  Nile. 
In     landscape     representations    the 
change  from  the  rigid  generalizations 
of  the  earlier  period  when  nothing  is 
added   which    is   not    essential   to  the 
clearness  of  the  narrative,  to  the  semi- 
naturalistic   methods  of  the  later  time 
in  which  pines,  palms,  and  vines  become 
recognizable  as  such,  is  more  marked. 
It  is,  however,  in.  the  representation 
of   animals   that    the   Assyrians  excel. 
With  these  no  other  nation  before  the 
Greeks   has   siicceeded  so  well.     Here 
the  artist's  models  were  ever  before  his 
eyes,  their  forms  not  hidden  by  heavy 
garments.      And    apparently  no  tradi- 
tions forbade  that  he  should  represent 
what  his  eyes  beheld  every  day.     So  in 
some  of    the    reliefs,    especially  those 
made  under  Assourbanipal,   of  dogs  strug- 
gling in  the  leash,  of  wild  asses  playing  and 
kicking  on  the  plains,  of  linns  at  liberty  in 
the  park  or  wounded  in  the  hunt,  one  hardly 
knows  which  to  admire  more,  the  remarka- 
ble  technique   of   the    stone    cutter   or  the 
marvelous    skill,    truth    and    force    of    the 
artist.     (See  the  relief  p.  141.) 

In  general  Assyrian  sculpture  excels  in 
vigor  and  movement,  but  shows  defect  in  its 
want  of  variety,  and  in  the  absence  of  woman 
from  its  creations. 


PRE-GREEK  ART. 


ASSOURBANIPAL   IN   HIS   CHARIOT 
A  relief  in  the  Louvre,  Paris. 


PHCENICIAN  ART.  (24) 
Phoenicia  gave  the  alphabet  to  the 
Greeks.  This  is  her  greatest  glory, 
her  one  important  original  contri- 
bution to  civilization.  Yet,  so  far  as  we 
know  she  possessed  no  poetry,  no  philoso- 
phy, no  literature.  This  people  seems  to 
have  invented  letters  merely  to  facilitate 
bookkeeping.  For  they  were  the  first  great 
manufacturing  commercial  nation,  the  first 
nation  of  traders.  From  1400  B.  C.  to  800 
B.  C.,  the  period  when  the  maritime 
supremacy  of  the  Phoenicians  was  undis- 
puted, whatever  Egypt  and  Assyria  in- 
vented, especially  that  which  could  prove 
attractive  to  the  eyes  of  barbarians,  the 
artisans  of  Phoenicia  imitated  and  per- 
fected. They  carried  their  wares  in  cara- 
vans overland  to  Jerusalem,  to  Babylon,  to 
Nineveh,  to  Arabia,  to  India,  as  far  north 
as  the  Caspian  Sea,  as  far  south  as  Egypt. 
Their  ships  seeking  the  murex  that  gave 
the  purple  d)^,  slave  stealing  and  trading, 


established  trading  posts  on  all  the  shores 
and  islands  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  pass- 
ing beyond  the  "Pillars  of  Hercules"  braved 
the  dangers  of  the  Atlantic  to  obtain  tin 
from  the  British  Isles. 

In  trade  they  were  as  shrewd  as  the  Jew, 
as  hardy,  as  ventursome  as  the  Anglo- 
Saxon.  Except  under  compulsion  they 
were  not  warlike,  and  readily  paid  tribute 
to  whatever  power  was  uppermost  in  that 
quarter  of  the  world.  Time-serving,  un- 
scrupulous, and  grossly  materialistic,  they 
seem  never  to  have  invented  an  artistic 
motive  or  created  a  thing  of  beauty  for  its 
own  sake.  They  had  no  lofty  ideas.  With 
an  eye  ever  out  for  the  "main  chance"  they 
were  most  prosaically  matter  of  fact. 

Yet  without  "wishing  it  or  willing  it"  they 
became  mighty  agents  in  the  spread  of 
civilization,  and  deserve  a  place  in  the  his- 
tory of  art,  because  they  were  the  inter- 
mediaries between  Egypt  and  Chaldaea  and 
that  wonderful  Greek  nation  which  was  first 
the  prey  of  Phoenicia,  then  her  pupil,  then 
her  master. 

In  the  pages  of  Homer  Phoenicia  repre- 
sents the  acme  of  perfection  in  art.  We 
read  of  Tyrian  garments,  Sidonian  craters, 
Phoenician  armor.  According  to  the  tale  of 
"Troy  Divine,"  Hephaestos,  the  god  of 
metallurgy,  could  produce  nothing  better 
than  the  work  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
narrow  strip  of  coast  at  the  eastern  end  of 
the  Mediterranean  Sea. 

Of  Phoenician  architecture  only  a  few 
fragments  of  city  walls  and  temple  founda- 
tions are  known,  of  which  the  sub-structures 
of  the  Temple  of  Solomon  at  Jerusalem 
furnish  perchance  the  finest  example.  In 
sculpture  too  the  remains  are  exceedingly 
scanty.  The  extant  specimens  serve  to  show 
that  in  the  eighth  century  B.  C.  Assyrian 
influence  was  dominant,  in  the  seventh  and 
the  sixth  centuries  B.  C.,  Egyptian  pre- 
vailed, while  from  the  fifth  century  B.  C. 
that  of  Greece  was  followed.  This  sculpture 
is  not  only  not  portrait-like,  but  from  it  we 
do  not  even  learn  the  characteristic  features 
of  the  Phoenicians. 

In  four  branches  of  manufacture  the  fame 
of  the  Phoenician  artisans  was  very  great. 
"Tyrian  Purple"  was  ever  the  most  sought 


PRE-GREEK  ART. 


for  and  the  costliest  of  dyes,  and  the  secret 
of  its  manufacture  was  most  jealously 
guarded.  Phoenician  woven  stuffs  were 
only  less  famous.  Of  these  we  .  now  of 
course  possess  little  m,ore  than  the  fame. 
As  Tyre  for  its  dyes,  so  Sidon  for  its  glass. 
The  manufacturers  in  this  article  imitated 
all  Egyptian  products  in  glass,  in  paste,  and 
in  faience  so  perfectly  that  an  expert  can- 
not always  decide  between  the  genuine  and 
the  imitation.  Later  they  went  beyond 
their  masters,  so  that  the  glass  of  Sidon  in 
ancient  time  may  fairly  be  compared  with 
that  of  Venice  or  of  Bohemia  in  modern 
times. 

But,  whatever  the  spade  may  yet  have  to 
teach  us  of  Phoenicians,  it  is  their  work  in 
the  metals  which  to-day  gives  us  the  clear- 
est picture  of  the  curiously  mixed  art  of  this 
remarkable  people.  Etruria,,  Nineveh,  Cy- 
prus, Crete,  Sardinia  have  all  yielded  their 
quota  of  vases,  patera,  candelabra  and 
statuettes.  Of  these  the  patera  are  perhaps 
the  most  characteristic  and  interesting. 


The  workmanship  is  often  very  beautiful. 
Sometimes  they  are  in  repousse;  sometimes 
the  main  work  is  done  with  the  chisel; 
usually  the  finishing  touches  and  the  details 
are  added  with  the  graver. 

A  patera  from  Cyprus  may  well  serve  as 
our  example.  Without  endeavoring  to 
account  for  all  figures  and  motives,  we  may 
note  that  the  walled  city  and  the  bowmen 
at  the  right  who  are  discharging  their  arrows 
at  its  defenders  were  plainly  suggested  from 
the  side  of  Assyria.  The  Jwplites,  soldiers 
with  helmets,  corselet  and  round  shields, 
immediately  to  the  right  of  the  city  seem 
meant  for  Greeks.  The  Sphinxes  of  the 
inner  zone,  the  scarabaeus  and  the  seated 
divinities  of  the  middle  zone  plainly  suggest 
Egypt.  Here  is  an  epitome  of  the  art  of 
Phoenicia.  She  imitates,  but  does  not  orig- 
inate, she  borrows,  but  does  not  assimilate. 
Yet  she  was  the  first  nation  to  use  the 
human  figure  not  to  tell  a  story  or  express  a 
thought,  but  simply  as  a  portion  of  a  pat- 
tern, as  a  motive  in  decoration. 


THE    AMATHUS    PATERA. 
New   York  Museum. 


altvtmg 


aud 

^Decoration, 


IN  THEIIL  HISTOICT 
ID EVELOPMENTa^  PRINCIPLES 

EDITOR,  »  1H  *  CHIEF 

EDMUND  BUCKLEY, A.M.,Pk.D,Univer5ityQfaiicago 

CONSULTING  EDITORS 

J.  M  .HOPPlN.im,  YaU  University 

ALFRED  V.CHURCHILL,A.M.,  ColumbiaUnivewity 


fulfy    Illustrated 


NATIONAL    ART    SOCIETY 
Chicago 


Copyright,  1907,  by  W.  E.  ERNST. 


Colosseum.  Arch  of  Titus.  Palatine  Hili. 

Basilica  of  Constantine.  Temple  of  Castor  and   Pollux. 

(three  arches.)  Column  of  Phocas. 

Arch  of  Septimus  Severus.  Julia  Basilica  (many  stumps). 

Via  Sacra.  Temple  of  Vespasian.  Temple  of  Saturn. 

THE    ROMAN    FORUM    IN    ITS    PRESENT    STATE. 


Architecture:   Greek,  Roman,  Byzantine, 
Romanesque  and   Gothic. 


BY 


A.  M.  BROOKS,  A.M. 

PROFESSOR    IN    HISTORY    OF    FINE   ART,    UNIVERSITY    OF    INDIANA. 


G 


REEK  ARCHITECTURE:  TIR- 
YNS,  MYCENAE,  THE  DORIC 
ORDER,  (i) 


All  works  of  classic  and  medieval 
architecture  belong  to  one  of  two  great 
groups.  These  groups  are  made  up  ac- 
cording as  the  buildings  they  contain  depend 
upon  one  or  the  other  of  two  fundamental 
principles  of  architectural  construction;  the 
first  that  of  the  post  and  lintel,  and  the 
second  that  of  the  arch.  In  post  and  lintel 
construction  upright  posts  or  columns  sup- 
port horizontal  beams  called  lintels.  This 
method  of  construction  has  been  known 


from  very  remote  times,  as  the  so-called 
temple  of  the  Sphinx  in  Egypt  bears  wit- 
ness. It  was  the  method  used  by  the  Greeks 
in  their  temple  architecture,  and  it  is  a 
method  in  general  use  at  the  present  day. 
There  is,  however,  one  marked  disadvantagfe 
attendant  upon  the  use  of  posts  and  lintels, 
for  while  columns  can  be  constructed  ot 
almost  any  height,  the  spaces  between  them 
must  always  be  of  limited  width,  because 
monolithic  blocks  of  stone  of  any  very  con. 
siderable  length  are  rare  as  well  as  costly. 
Moreover,  such  stones  are  not  capable  ot 
supporting  any  great  weight  of  superstruc- 
ture. It  is  evident,  then,  that  in 


155 


156 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


of  the  post  and  lintel  group  there  can  be  no 
apartment  of  great  dimensions  in  which  the 
floor  space  is  not  obstructed  by  the  columns 
which,  though  necessary  for  the  support  of 
the  roof,  seriously  interfere  with  seeing  and 
hearing.  Hence  we  might  naturally  expect, 
what  we  know  to  be  the  case,  that  the  post 
and  lintel  buildings  of  antiquity  were  for 
the  most  part  one-story  structures,  and  that 
they  contained  no  large  stone-roofed  apart- 
ments of  unobstructed  space.  The  vast 


GATE    OF    THE   LIONS    AT    MYCENAE. 

halls  of  Karnak  and  the  Egyptian  Thebes 
contained  many  scores  of  columns  within 
their  walls,  and  with  the  exception  of  the 
central  aisles,  were  but  one  story  high.  The 
noble  and  exquisite  fifth  century  Greek 
temples  were  all,  as  is  well  known,  one  story 
buildings. 

In  Greece,  upon  the  shores  of  the  Argolic 
Gulf,  still  stand  the  walls  of  what  is  prob- 
ably the  oldest  city  in  Europe,  Tiryns; 
Homer's  "Tiryns  of  the  great  walls. "  The 


masonry  of  these  walls  is  Cyclopean ;  bowl- 
ders piled  one  upon  another,  the  supposed 
work  of  the  Cyclopes. 

In     the     neighborhood    of     Tiryns,     but 
younger   in    years,    stood   the    ancient    and 
powerful  city  of   Mycenae.     The  period  of 
its   best    civilization   extended    from   about 
1500  to  1000  B.  C.,  and  of  this  period  some 
interesting  and  remarkably  complete  remains 
have  come  down  to  us.     The  Gate  of  Lions 
offers  an  early  example  of   the  use  of  the 
post  and   lintel   in  Greek  architec- 
ture, although  the  walls  upon  either 
side  of  the  stone  posts  are  arranged 
so  as  to  receive  a  part  of  the  weight 
of  the  lintel  which  is  about  fourteen 
feet  long.      In  order  to  relieve  the 
lintel  of  weight,  the  stones  of  the 
wall  were   laid   so    that   they   pro- 
jected over  one  another,  and  were 
so  cut  that  together  with  the  lintel 
they  enclosed  an  open  space  of  tri- 
angular   shape.      This    space    was 
closed  by  a  triangular  slab  of  stone 
upon  which  we  may  yet  see  the  em- 
blems of  faith,  altar  and  pillar,  sup- 
ported by  the  emblems  of  power, 
lions. 

Still  more  remarkable  is  the  se- 
ries of  tombs  unearthed  during  the 
excavations  of  Dr.  Schliemann.  So 
much  wealth,  in  the  form  of  gold 
ornaments,  clasps  and  diadems,  and 
the  decorations  sewn  upon  the  gar- 
ments of  the  dead,  was  found  that 
the  tombs  were  at  first  thought  to 
have  been  treasuries,  and  the  most 
important  is  always  spoken  of  as 
the  treasury  of  Atreus.  It  is  built 
of  cut  stone,  in  the  form  of  a  bee- 
hive, and  the  blocks  are  fitted  with 
great  care  and  accuracy.  The  floor  meas- 
ures about  forty-five  feet  across  and  the 
height  of  the  chamber  is  the  same. 

In  the  remains  of  Tiryns  and  Mycenae  we 
can  trace  the  development  of  the  art  of  stone 
construction  from  the  point  where  men 
rolled  together  the  bowlders  of  the  field  and 
heaped  them  on  one  another,  as  at  Tiryns; 
through  the  period  of  rough-hewing,  when 
the  blocks  were  cut,  but  not  planed  or  fitted 
in  other  than  the  rudest  manner,  as  in  the 


BYZANTINE,   ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC. 


'57 


Lion  gate  of  Mycenae,  to  the  period  when 
the  builder  cut  and  smoothed  his  blocks  and 
carefully  fitted  them  together,  as  in  the 
walls  of  the  treasury  of  Atreus. 

The  peculiar  and  individual  forms  which 
distinguish  a  building,  or  a  group  of  build- 
ings, from  all  others,  constitute  architec- 
i  tural  style.  \K  row  of  columns  supporting 
an  entablature  and  a  gable  characterize  the 
appearance  of  the  front  of  a  Greek  temple, 
and  we  say  such  a  temple  is  in  the  classic 
style.  J  It  is  subdivided  into  two  main  divi- 
sions, the  Greek  classic  and  the  Roman 
classic,  and  it  is  the  former  which  must  first 
receive  our  attention.  Presently  we  shall 
speak  of  Roman  buildings,  which  have  an 
entirely  different  principle  of  construction 
from  the  Greek,  the  principle  of  the  arch 
already  referred  to.  Yet  the  Greek  and  the 
Roman  classic  styles  both  employed  what 
are  known  as  the  Orders,  and  these  orders 
and  the  different  uses  made  of  them  are 
among  the  most  important  data  which  de- 
termine the  age,  source  and  style  of  a  classic 
building.  Ity  an  order  in  classic  architec- 
ture we  mean  a  column  entire — shaft,  cap- 
ital, and  base,  if  there  is  one,  together  with 
the  entablature,  the  horizontal  superstruc- 
ture which  rests  upon  the  column.  The 
orders  are  distinguished  by  their  individual 
forms,  and  in  Greek  architecture  there  are 
three  varieties  which  determine,  according 
as  they  were  used,  the  style  of  the  buildings 
to  which  they  belong.  They  are  the  Doric, 
Ionic,  and  Corinthian. 

In  the  Greek  Doric  order  the  column  is 
fluted,  and  the  flutes  are  less  than  a  semi- 
circle in  depth.   The  cap- 
ital   is  divided   into   two 
parts  of  equal  thickness, 
the  lower  called  echinos, 
and    the    upper    abacus, 
a    square     plinth    which 
gives  a  firm  footing  for 
the    superstructure.       In 
this  order  the  column  has 
no    separate    base.     The 
entablature     consists    of 
three   parts,  the  lower,  called    epistyle,  the 
central  part,  the  frieze,  which  is   made    up 
of   a  series  of  short  upright  blocks  of  stone, 
triglyphs,  whose  office  like  that  of  the  col- 


CROSS-SECTION   OF 
DORIC     SHAFT. 


umns  is  to  support,  while  the  spaces  between 
the  triglyphs  are  closed  with  slabs  of  stone 
called  metopes.  The  metopes  were  often 
decorated  with  bas-relief  sculptures,  while 
the  triglyphs 
were  always 
treated  with  a 
series  of  verti- 
cal flutes.  The 
third  and  high- 
est division  of 
the  entablature, 
the  cornice, con- 
sists of  a  series 
of  lintels  which 
project  over  and 
rest  upon  the 
triglyphs.  The 
office  of  the  cor- 
nice is  two-fold : 
to  protect  the 
lower  parts  of 
the  entablature, 
and  to  provide 
a  broad  and  se- 
cure footing  for 
the  roof.  Above 
and  below  each 
triglyph  and 

over  each  metope  there  is  a  series  of  carved 
stone  drops  called  guttae.  The  Doric  order 
is  remarkable  alike  for  the  solidity  of  its 
proportions  and  the  simplicity  of  its  com- 
position. Every  part  has  its  function,  and 
each  function  is  clearly  expressed.  The 
peculiar  beauty  of  this  order  exists  largely 
in  its  profiles  or  bounding  lines,  every  one 
of  which  in  the  best  examples  is  a  free- 
hand line  traced  with  wonderful  precision, 
and  a  regard  for  vital  strength  and  beauty 
unequaled. 


GREEK    DORIC    ORDER,    AS    USED 
IN    THE    PARTHENON,    ATHENS. 


G 


REEK  ARCHITECTURE:  THE 
PARTHENON.  (2) 


The  temple  dedicated  to  Athene, 
the  Parthenon,  standing  on  the 
Acropolis  of  Athens,  is  the  masterpiece  of 
the  classic  style  and  the  Doric  order  (p.  154). 
Its  existence,  like  that  of  the  other  works  of 
art  on  the  Acropolis — works  which  even  in 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


their  dilapidation  are  looked  on  as  "hope- 
less models  of  perfection" — was  due  to 
Pericles,  who  became  leader  of  the  Athenian 
state  in  461  B.  C.  The  Parthenon  stood 
upon  a  three-stepped  platform  which  meas- 
ured about  one  hundred  feet  in  width  by  two 
hundred  in  length,  and  it  was  sixty-five  feet 
high.  Such  were  the  modest  dimensions  of 
the  chief  edifice  of  Athens,  and  the  one 
acknowledged  by  architects  and  critics  alike 
to  have  approached  nearest  to  perfection  of 
any  structure  ever  built.  The  material 
used  was  white  marble  from  the  quarries  of 
Mt.  Pentelicus.  It  was  built  for  a  shelter — 
to  be  the  house  of  the  statue  of  the  goddess, 
as  well  as  a  treasury  for  the  offerings  made 
at  her  altar;  not  a  place  in  which  congrega- 
tions gathered,  but  a  center  of  worship. 
The  open  top  of  the  Acropolis  was  the  place 
of  congregation,  and  the  Parthenon  was  the 
shrine.  It  was  to  the  Acropolis  what  the 
high  altar  is  to  a  cathedral. 

The  upper  step  of  the  platform  was  the 
floor  of  the  colonnade  which  surrounded  the 
temple,  although  the  level  of  the  floor  of 
the  interior,  the  cella,  was  two  steps  higher. 
This  colonnade  which  extends  around  the 
four  sides  of  the  cella,  was  composed  of 
Doric  columns  six  feet  in  diameter  and 
thirty-four  feet  high.  The  columns  were 
placed  at  the  outer  edge  of  the  platform. 
They  supported  the  entablature  upon  which 
the  roof  rested.  The  roof  was  low-pitched 
with  gables  or  pediments  facing  east  and 
west.  The  depth  of  this  colonnade  was  a 
little  over  seven  feet.  At  this  distance 
within  its  columns  there  was  a  second  plat- 
form reached  by  two  steps,  the  upper  of 
which  formed  the  cella  floor  as  has  been 
said.  The  cella  wall  rose  from  the  edge  of 
the  platform  on  its  long  sides,  while  at  the 
ends  the  walls  were  pushed  back  and  a  row 
of  six  columns  was  placed  on  the  edge  of  it. 
This  arrangement  made  the  colonnades  of 
the  east  and  west  ends  of  the  temple  some- 
what more  than  double  the  width  of  the  side 
colonnades. 

Single  doors  in  the  middle  of  the  east  and 
west  wall  gave  access  to  the  interior,  which 
was  divided  by  a  partition  into  two  compart- 
ments of  unequal  size.  The  larger  of  the 
two  opened  to  the  east,  and  contained  the 


famous  gold  and  ivory  statue  of  Athene,  the 
work  of  Phidias  and  the  most  renowned 
statue  of  antiquity.  The  smaller  hall 
opened  to  the  west,  and  served  as  a  treas- 
ury. Of  the  method  of  lighting  the  interior 
little  is  known  with  certainty.  The  larger 
hall  was  separated  into  a  broad  nave  and 
single  side  aisles,  and  these  aisles  were  two- 
storied.  The  columns  of  both  lower  and 
upper  stories  were  Doric.  The  roof  of  the 
treasury  was  carried  by  four  Ionic  columns. 

The  Doric  order  of  the  Parthenon  owed 
its  extreme  beauty  to  the  refinements  of  its 
profiles.  There  was  scarcely  a  vertical  or  a 
horizontal  line  in  the  entire  temple.  By  an 
optical  illusion  any  long  horizontal  lines, 
such  as  those  of  the  steps  of  the  foundation, 
will  appear  to  sag  in  the  middle.  To  over- 
come this  apparent  defect  all  such  lines  were 
given  a  slight  upward  curvature,  so  slight, 
however,  as  only  to  give  the  steps  the  ap- 
pearance of  being  perfectly  flat.  By  a  sim- 
ilar illusion  columns,  the  sides  of  which  are 
vertical,  will  appear  to  be  slightly  concave ; 
to  overcome  this  the  sides  of  the  columns 
were  given  a  slight  entasis  or  swelling. 
Another  refinement  of  this  sort  was  the 
tapering  of  the  column,  for  by  another 
illusion  the  column  would  seem  to  spread  at 
the  top  of  the  shaft.  In  reality  this  would 
be  a  grave  fault  of  construction ;  and  to  the 
sensitive  Greeks  no  less  a  fault  in  seeming. 
Again,  none  of  the  columns  rose  in  vertical 
lines,  because  such  would  appear  to  tip  for- 
wards, and  to  prevent  this  the  columns  were 
slightly  inclined  towards  the  cella  walls. 
The  corner  columns,  to  give  the  look  of 
strength  as  well  as  the  reality  of  it  where 
most  needed,  were  made  stouter  than  the 
others,  and  they  were  inclined  inwards  upon 
the  diagonals  of  the  temple.  Finally,  the 
cella  floor,  which  if  laid  flat  would  have 
appeared  somewhat  concave,  was  bowed  up 
or  crowned  from  all  sides  towards  the  cen- 
ter. Such  refinements  as  these  are  expres- 
sive of  a  wonderful  keenness  of  perception, 
and  an  unparalleled  sense  of  beauty,  on  the 
part  of  those  who  designed  and  constructed 
the  Parthenon. 

Perhaps  nothing  was  more  remarkable 
about  this  temple  than  the  workmanship 
exhibited  in  the  profiles  and  surfaces,  and 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC. 


the  joints  of  its  masonry  laid  without  mor- 
tar, and  so  nicely  that  when  the  columns  fell 
as  the  result  of  earthquake  and  cannon  shot, 
they  broke  in  many  instances  across  rather 
than  with  the  joints. 

Besides  the  bas-reliefs  of  the  metopes, 
which  represented  the  individual  struggles 
of  giants  and  centaurs  with  men,  and  are 
thought  by  some  to  have  signified  the  strug- 
gle between  Greeks  and  barbarians,  or  the 
victory  of  civilization  over  barbarism,  there 
were  other  sculptures  used  for  the  decora- 
tion of  the  Parthenon;  the  statues  of  the 
pediments  and  the  bas-reliefs  of  the  frieze. 
This  frieze  is  continuous  and  always  to  be 
distinguished  from  the  true  Doric  frieze  of 
the  entablature,  one,  as  we  have  said,  com- 
posed of  alternate  triglyphs  and  metopes. 
It  is  a  band  of  continuous  sculptures  in  low 
relief  which  runs  around  the  top  of  the  out- 
side of  the  cella  wall.  Such  a  frieze  is  char- 
acteristic of  the  Ionic  order,  as  we  shall 
presently  explain,  and  being  placed  upon  a 
temple  of  the  Doric  style  shows  that  the 
architects  of  Athens  did  not  hesitate  to 
appropriate  whatever  served  their  purpose, 
and  to  incorporate  it  where  they  chose;  it 
shows  that  they  were  not  bound  by  hard 
and  fast  rules  of  architectural  composition. 
This  frieze  was  not  seen  in  any  general  view 
of  the  building,  yet  as  seen  on  looking  up 
from  the  steps  and  the  colonnade,  it  was  the 
crowning  beauty  of  the  structure.  It  repre- 
sented the  chief  religious  festival  of  the 
Athenians;  the  one  in  which  the  highest 
born  of  the  city,  old  and  young,  formed  in 
solemn  annual  procession  and  bore  Athene's 
offering,  a  woven  and  embroidered  veil,  to 
her  shrine.  Each  participant,  horseman  and 
footman,  matron  and  maiden,  carrier  of 
water,  musician  and  judge — all  were  to  be 
seen  on  the  frieze  of  the  cella,  a  constant 
reminder  of  the  purpose  of  the  temple.  (See 
cuts  pp.  30,  120.) 

The  pediments  were  filled  with  groups  of 
statues  carved  in  the  round,  which  were 
expressive  of  the  temple's  origin;  in  the 
east  pediment  the  gods  of  Olympus  present 
at  the  birth  of  Athene,  and  in  the  west 
Athene's  successful  struggle  with  Poseidon 
for  the  mastery  of  Attica. 

The  architecture  of   the   Parthenon   was 


organic  in  the  same  way  that  a  tree  in  leaf 
is  organic :  the  unity  of  the  trunk,  boughs, 
twigs  and  leaves  of  the  natural  object  find- 
ing its  analogue  in  the  unity  of  the  founda- 
tion, columns,  entablature  and  roof  of  the 
artificial  one.  Such  unity  is  one  of  the  main 
sources  of  beauty  in  architecture,  and  results 
from  the  care  with  which  every  dimension  is 
proportioned  to  every  other;  a  slenderer 
member  never  appearing  to  be  crushed  by  a 
thicker.  Moreover,  every  dimension  of  the 
Parthenon  was  derived  from  the  unit  of 
measure,  the  six-foot  diameter  of  the  bases 
of  the  central  front  columns,  every  width, 
length  and  height  of  the  parts  as  well  as 
the  whole  being  a  multiple  of  that  unit. 


G 


REEK  ARCHITECTURE:  THE 
IONIC  ORDER,  THE  COR- 
INTHIAN ORDER.  (3) 


The  Ionic  order  was  invented  in 
Asia  Minor,  and  it  partook  somewhat  of  the 
elaborate  charac- 
ter of  all  Asiatic 
architecture,  but 
being  of  Greek  ori- 
gin, the  elabora- 
tion was  restrained 
and  temperate. 
The  best  example 
of  it  was  the 
Erechtheion,  the 
temple  dedicated 
to  Athene,  Posei- 
don, and  the  myth- 
ical hero  Erech- 
theus.  It  likewise 
stood  upon  the 
summit  of  the 
Athenian  Acropo- 
lis. In  general 
the  Ionic  order  is 
much  lighter  and 

more  slender  than  the  Doric,  the  shaft  aver- 
aging eight  diameters  in  height,  while  the 
Doric  shafts  of  the  Parthenon  are  but  five. 
The  capital  is  higher  than  the  Doric,  and 
consists  of  a  scroll  rolled  out,  as  it  were, 
over  the  top  of  the  shaft,  the  necking  under 
the  scroll — the  ends  of  which  appear  as 


IONIC  ORDER  OF  THE   ERECH- 
THEION. 


i6o 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


RESTORATION   OF   THE   ERECHTHEION. 


volutes, — being  decorated  with  a  pattern  in 
relief.  The  abacus  is  very  thin,  and  its 
molded  edge  is  ornamented  with  a  carved 
border.  The  Ionic  order  always  has  an  in- 
dividual base,  but  the  form  of  this  base 
varies  a  good  deal  in  different  examples. 
The  entablature  is  made  up  of  three  parts, 
but  is  much  lighter  than  the  Doric.  The 
epistyle  is  cut  with  three  faces  which  pro- 
ject one  over  another,  and  is  usually  capped 
with  a  carved  molding.  The  frieze  is  con- 
tinuous, either  a  plain  surface  like  the  Doric 
epistyle,  or  a  band  of  relief  sculpture.  The 
cornice  projects  considerably  over  the  face 
of  the  frieze,  and  is  deeply  undercut.  It  is 
usually  decorated  with  carved  moldings,  the 
egg  and  dart,  bead  and  reel,  or  leaf  and 
tongue. 

The  Erechtheion  was  not  completed  until 
a  number  of  years  after  the  death  of  Per- 
icles, probably  in  408  B.  C.  It  stood  but  a 
little  more  than  a  hundred  feet  from  the 
Parthenon,  and  its  design  was  a  far  more 
difficult  problem  for  the  architect  than  that 
of  the  Parthenon.  He  knew  that  it  was 
hopeless  to  surpass  that  edifice,  and  that, 
nevertheless,  he  must  build  a  temple  of  un- 
surpassed beauty.  This  may  be  the  reason 
why  he  chose  a  new  order,  the  Ionic.  In 
choosing  an  order  different  from  that  of  the 
Parthenon,  he  obeyed  a  fundamental  law  of 
art,  the  law  of  contrast.  He  placed  the  small 
and  richly  ornamented  Erechtheion  near  the 
great  simple  mass  of  the  Parthenon,  in  order 
that  one  might  act  as  a  foil  to  the  other. 

These  temples  were  contrasted  not  only  in 


size    and    order,   but    even   in 
plan.     The   Erechtheion  had  a 
cella  about  sixty  feet  long  and 
thirty-three  wide,    and   at   one 
end    there    were    two    smaller 
porticos,  the  larger  facing  north 
and   the    smaller    south.      The 
irregularity  of   this  temple  was 
still    further    increased  by  the 
fact   that    its   three    wings    all 
stood  at  different  levels.     This 
condition  was  forced   upon  the 
architect,  because  the  site  had 
been  previously  consecrated  to 
several  shrines,  and  consequent- 
ly   could    not    be     leveled    or 
disturbed.      The  irregularity  of  the  Erech- 
theion  produces   a   striking  contrast    when 
compared  with  the   symmetry  of    the    Par- 
thenon.    It   shows   that     Greek    architects, 
while    they   chose     the    symmetrical    form 
where  such  was  possible,  were  not  afraid  to 
undertake   a    design   of  the   most   opposite 
character  when  conditions  demanded  it. 

The  east  end  of  the  large  cella  was  the 
principal  facade.  It  had  six  Ionic  columns, 
placed  at  the  edge  of  the  upper  step  of  the 
foundation,  which  formed  a  colonnade  be- 
fore the  portal.  These  columns  supported 
an  entablature  and  pediment.  Each  column 
had  its  individual  base,  which  consisted  of 
three  circular  slabs  of  stone — the  middle  one 
smaller  than  the  others  and  finished  with  a 


PLAN    OF    THE    ERECHTHEION. 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC. 


161 


CROSS-SECTION    OF 
IONIC    SHAFT. 


concave  edge,  while  the  upper  and  lower 
slabs  had  convex  edges.  This  base,  known 
as  the  Attic,  has  been  the  model  more  or  less 
followed  by  architects  in  all  ages  down  to 
our  own.  The  shafts  were  fluted,  but  the 
flutes,  twenty-four  in  number, 
were  separated  from  one  an- 
other by  narrow  flat  surfaces. 
The  order 

of  the   north 

po  rtico  was 

very    similar 

to  that  of  the 

east,  but  the 

columns  were 

differently  ar- 
ranged, there 

being     but 

four  across 
the  front  with  one    added  be- 
hind each  corner  column,  thus 
giving    considerable    depth    to 
the  portico  and   allowing  it  to  be  entered 
from  the  sides  as  well   as  from  the   front. 
The  workmanship  of  the  Erechtheion  was 
equal  to  that  of  the  Parthenon.     Its  carved 
moldings   illustrate   the   Greek   passion  for 
form;    for   even  where  the   most   elaborate 
carving  was  used,  the  original  profile  of  the 
molding  was  never  concealed.     On  the  con- 
trary, the  profiling  was  emphasized  by  hav- 
ing the  main  lines  and  surfaces  of  the  orna- 
ment,  egg  and  dart,  bead  and 
reel,  and  leaf  and  tongue   fol- 
low the  form  of  the  moldings 
with  great  accuracy. 

On  the  south  side  of  the 
Erechtheion  was  a  small  porch 
unlike  any  other  work  of  art 
in  Athens,  unique  and  one  of 
the  most  beautiful  in  the  whole 
world — the  porch  of  the  maid- 
ens. Like  the  other  parts  of 
the  Erechtheion,  it  had  its  own 
foundation,  a  small  oblong 
three-stepped  platform  from 
which  there  rose  a  plain  wall 
about  five  feet  high.  This  wall 
had  a  molded  base  and  cornice 
of  its  own.  Upon  it,  as  a  base- 
ment, stood  six  marble  statues, 
draped  female  figures,  all  fac- 


ing in  the  same  direction,  four  across  the 
front  and  one  a  few  feet  behind  at  each 
end.  The  figures  are  crowned  with  bas- 
ket-like head  dresses  which  answer  the 
purpose  of  capitals,  and  upon  these  the 


MOLDINGS    FROM    THE    ERECHTHEION. 


entablature  and  the  beams  of  the  roof  rest. 
The  fitness  of  this  entablature  is  noticeable. 
The  frieze  is  omitted,  thus  reducing  the 
thickness  and  apparent  weight  to  propor- 
tions suitable  to  the  supporting  power  of  the 
figures.  To  still  further  diminish  the  ap- 
pearance of  weight,  the  upper  face  of  the 
epistyle  was  decorated  with  a  row  of  disks, 
and  lastly  the  thin  cornice  was  given  a  row 
of  small  projecting  blocks,  a  dentil  course. 


PORCH   OF   THE   MAIDENS,    ERECHTHEION,    ATHENS. 


162 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


This  latter  feature  was  characteristic  of  the 
Asiatic-Ionic  entablature,  but  was  omitted, 
as  the  east  and  south  porches  of  the  Erech- 
theion  bear  witness,  in  the  Attic-Ionic  style. 
The  entire  design  of  this  little  porch  pro- 
duces an  idea  of  perfect  stability  as  well  as 
unique  beauty:  a  design  eminently  fitted 
for  a  small  structure  which  the  Greeks  would 
never  have  thought  of  applying  to  a  great 
one. 

The  Erechtheion  and  the  Parthenon  were 
both  colored,  a  fact  very  difficult  of  compre- 
hension to  us  accustomed  to  look  upon  white 
marble  as  the  finest  building  material  obtain- 


THE    PROPYL/EA    ON    THE   ACROPOLIS,    ATHENS. 


able.  To  us  it  seems  barbarous  to  suggest 
coloring  such  material,  but  we  must  remem- 
ber that  bronze,  and  silver,  gold,  ivory  and 
ebony  were  not  rare  as  materials  for  the 
decoration  of  the  architecture  known  to  the 
Greeks.  With  ideas  of  color  such  as  these 
things  give,  it  is  scarcely  to  be  wondered 
that  plain  marble  should  have  been  consid- 
ered unsuitable  for  the  finest  structures. 
We  know  from  actual  remains  that  the 
Parthenon  and  Erechtheion  were  colored. 
The  Doric  order  had  no  carved  ornament; 
but  the  moldings  of  its  cornice,  the  echinos 
of  its  columns  and  the  raking  moldings  of  its 


pediment  were  painted  with  intricate  designs 
in  color,  the  shafts  were  tinted  with  a  creamy 
yellow,  and  the  triglyphs  were  colored  with 
fine  reds  and  blues,  while  the  statues  of  the 
pediments  and  the  bas-reliefs  of  the  frieze 
were  often  colored  in  a  somewhat  natural- 
istic manner,  draperies,  eyes  and  hair  being 
given  each  their  appropriate  shades,,  and  the 
whole  relieved  against  dark  backgrounds. 
In  the  Ionic  order  the  carvings  on  the  mold- 
ings were  picked  out  with  strong  color,  and 
often,  as  with  the  eyes  of  the  volutes  of 
Ionic  capitals,  and  other  especially  con- 
spicuous parts,  gold  leaf  was  used. 

There  were  other  im- 
portant buildings  erect- 
ed upon  the  Acropolis 
during  the  age  of  Peri- 
cles. The  chief  of  these, 
and  one  not  inferior  in 
size  or  in  any  other 
quality  to  the  temples 
just  described,  was  the 
entrance  gate,  the  Pro- 
pylaea.  It  stood  on  the 
side  of  the  hill,  and  one 
front  faced  the  city 
while  the  other  and 
higher  in  point  of  sit- 
uation faced  the  Acrop- 
olis. These  fronts  were 
like  temple  fronts,  and 
each  had  six  Doric 
columns  which  carried 
entablatures  and  pedi- 
ments. The  fronts  were 
ingeniously  connected 
so  that  a  hall  was 

formed  between  them,  the  roof  of  which  was 
supported  by  a  double  row  of  Ionic  columns. 
A  partition  wall  divided  this  hall,  and  in  it 
there  were  five  portals.  To  the  right  and  left 
of  the  front  facing  the  city  there  were  great 
projecting  terraces  upon  which  stood  rectan- 
gular structures,  wings  really  of  the  main 
building.  One  of  these  served  perhaps  as  a 
guardhouse,  and  the  other  was  the  national 
picture  gallery.  A  broad  roadway  for 
horses  and  vehicles  wound  up  from  the  city 
and  passed  directly  through  the  middle  of 
the  Propyiaea,  between  the  columns  of  its 
hall,  through  the  central  portal  of  its  parti- 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC. 


163 


tion-wall  and  out  onto  the  Acropolis  itself. 
Upon  either  side  of  this  road  there  were  long 
flights  of  steps  for  persons  on  foot,  which, 
together  with  the  space  occupied  by  the 
road,  the  wall  with  the  five  gates,  the  broken 
shafts  of  the  front  porch,  and  the  left  wing, 
may  still  be  seen  in  the  extant  ruins. 

To  the  right  of  the  Propylasa  and  standing 
upon  a  high  bastion  are  the  remains  of  a 
very  beautiful  little  temple  dedicated  to 
Wingless  Victory.  It  has  a  small  cella  open 
upon  one  side,  and  a  four-column  portico 
upon  each  end.  It  was  especially  remark- 
able for  the  sculptures  with  which  it  was 
decorated. 

During  the  age  of  Pericles  a  foreign  de- 
velopment, the  Corinthian  Capital,  was 
engrafted  upon  the  Ionic  order.  This  inno- 
vation applied  to  the  capital  alone,  the  shaft, 
base,  and  entablature  remaining  practically 
unchanged.  It  hardly  merits  the  dignity  of 
being  called  an  order,  certainly  not  as  used 
by  the  Greeks.  The  Corinthian  capital,  as 
we  are  familiar  with  it  in  so  many  Italian 
buildings,  as  so  much  used  by  the  Romans 
and  so  generally  copied  by  us,  did  not  occur 
in  Greece  until  the  decline  of  Greek  art  had 
set  in.  It  was  a  Roman  development,  and 
as  such  we  shall  consider  it.  In  the  Greek 
architecture  of  the  age  of  Pericles  it  was  a 
fanciful  and  always  freshly  designed  gar- 
land of  leafage  and  flowers  carved  upon 
the  surface  of  a  bell-shaped  block. 

The  Choragic  monument  of  Lysicrates  in 
Athens,  built  in  334  B.  C.  (p.  164),  presents  a 


TEMPLE  TO   WINGLESS   VICTORY,    ATHENS. 

beautiful  example  of  the  Corinthian  capital 
as  used  by  the  Greeks.  The  proportions  of 
this  monument  are  delicate,  and  the  rela- 
tion between  its  square  basement  with  its 
simple  cornice  and  the  circular  superstruc- 
ture with  its  stepped  foundation  is  very 
happy.  From  the  severity  of  the  undeco- 
rated  basement,  this  little  monument  in- 
creased in  richness  until  at  the  summit  it 
fairly  blossomed;  yet  all  of  its  decoration 
was  so  placed,  and  so  carefully  contrasted 
with  plain  surfaces,  that  not  one  ornament 
failed  to  produce  its  proper  effect,  while  the 
form  and  structure  of  the  whole  was  empha- 
sized by  the  decoration:  in  other  words  it 
was  Greek. 


R 


OMAN  ARCHITECTURE:  ARCH 
AND  VAULT.  (4) 


ilillll i ill  II 

GREEK    CORINTHIAN    CAPITAL. 


The  second  of  the  two  great 
groups  of  architectural  works  re- 
ferred to  at  the  beginning  of  this  essay 
depends  upon  the  constructive  principle  of 
the  arch.  It  was  understood  by  the  Egyp- 
tians and  in  common  use  among  the  Assyr- 
ians. Although  known  to  the  Greeks,  it 
seems  to  have  been  for  the  most  part  un- 
heeded, but  in  Italy  we  find  the  Etruscans, 
predecessors  of  the  Romans  in  possession 
of  the  land  and  knowledge  of  the  arts,  mak- 
ing very  early  use  of  the  arch  principle  both 
in  drains  and  in  tombs.  When  the  Romans 


164 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


CHORAGIC   MONUMENT   OF   LYSICRATES,    ATHENS. 


began  to  build  they  turned  naturally  to  their 
Etruscan  neighbors  for  models  and  instruc- 
tion, and  from  them  they  learned  the  struc- 
tural use  of  the  arch. 

The  Romans,  always  practical,  at  once 
recognized  the  advantage  which  the  arch  of 
Etruria  had  over  the  post  and  lintel  of 
Greece,  an  advantage  particularly  applicable 
to  their  needs.  It  is  well  known  that  the 
Romans  were  a  legislating  and  amusement- 
loving  people,  and  hence  among  the  earliest 
architectural  requirements  of  the  fully  devel- 
oped Roman  empire  were  halls  capable  of 
accommodating  large  gatherings  of  persons 
come  together  to  hear  cases  argued  and 
judgments  rendered,  as  well  as  theaters  and 


amphitheaters  with  seating  capacity  for 
many  thousands  of  spectators.  In  the  days 
of  the  republic  the  buildings  of  Rome  appear 
to  have  been  insignificant,  and  it  was  not 
until  the  time  of  Julius  Caesar  that  the  recon- 
struction of  the  buildings  in  the  Forum  was 
begun  upon  a  scale  of  any  magnificence.  It 
was  not  until  the  age  of  Augustus  Caesar  and 
his  immediate  successors  that  Rome  took  on 
that  unsurpassed  splendor  which  was  the  fit 
expression  of  the  power  and  resource  of  the 
empire. 

Two  great  advantages  resided  in  the  arch 
as  a  principle  of  construction  when  compared 
with  the  post  and  lintel.  First,  the  arch 
could  be  placed  over  large  spaces,  no  sup- 
ports being  required  but  those  at  its  points 
of  springing,  at  the  impost;  second,  it  could 
be  constructed  of  small  materials,  bricks, 
concrete  and  small  stones. 

For  many  years,  even  until  the  last  days 
of  the  republic,  the  buildings  of  Rome  were 
constructed  of  brick  and  concrete.  Then 
came  the  reconstruction  or  the  rebuilding  of 
the  city,  the  golden  age  of  Augustus,  and 
with  it  the  same  methods  of  building  and 
the  same  materials  as  formerly,  but  also  the 
custom  of  hiding  the  rough  brick  walls  and 
concrete  vaults  under  a  splendid  marble  cas- 
ing or  veneer.  Hence  the  boast  of  Augus- 
tus, "I  found  a  Rome  of  brick,  and  I  leave  a 
Rome  of  marble." 

Roman  arches  were  semi-circular,  a  form 
which  exerts  a  strong  lateral  thrust,  or  tend- 
ency to  spring  apart.  These  thrusts  had  to 
be  met  by  some  opposing  force,  and  such 
force  was  obtained  in  a  number  of  ways. 
One  was  to  place  tlie  arch  upon  walls  of 
great  strength  and  thickness,  such  as  by 
their  inertia  would  more  than  counterbalance 
the  thrust.  Another  was  that  of  loading  the 
haunches  of  the  arch  with  terraces  of  mason- 
ry; still  another  to  carry  the  wall  up  above 
the  impost  or  springing  point  of  the  arch, 
thus  increasing  the  inertia  of  the  wall  by  the 
addition  of  vertical  weight.  So  long  as  the 
abutments  at  the  sides  of  an  arch  are  more 
than  sufficient  to  oppose  the  thrusts  put  upon 
them,  the  greater  the  weight  on  the  crown 
of  the  arch,  the  more  stable  the  whole  struc- 
ture becomes.  But  the  instant  that  the 
thrusts  exceed  the  opposing  force  the  arch 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC. 


165 


will  fall ;  for,  as  the  Arabian  proverb  has  it, 
the  arch  never  sleeps. 

With  the  use  of  arches  came  the  develop- 
ment of  vaults:  stone,  brick  or  concrete 
roofs  made  up  of  arches  variously  disposed. 
The  principal  varieties  of  vaults  used  by 
the  Romans  were,  the  barrel  vault,  the 
elliptical  groin  vault,  and  the  hemispherical 
dome. 

The  first  is  a  vault  of  semi-circular  form, 
and  gets  its  name  from  its  resemblance  to  a 
half-barrel.  Perhaps  the  earliest  Roman 
example  is  still  to  be  seen  in  the  Cloaca 
Maxima,  the  drain  that  to-day,  serviceable 
as  in  the  fifth  century  B.  C.,  carries  off  the 
water  from  a  marshy  portion  of  the  city. 
While  such  a  vault  is,  strictly  speaking,  a 
work  of  engineering  skill,  the  same  prin- 
ciples are  involved  as  in  the  barrel  vaults  of 
buildings,  the  earth  itself  here  forming  both 
abutment  and  load. 

Because  the  barrel  vault  was  expensive — 
requiring  continuous  abutments-and  because 
it  restricted  the  designer  of  a  building  in  the 
free  placing  of  windows,  Roman  architects 
made  much  use  of  the  elliptical  groin  vault. 
This  consisted  of  two  barrel  vaults  of  equal 
span,  hence  of  equal  height,  which  inter- 
penetrated at  right  angles.  The  advantage 
of  such  a  vault  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  does 
not  require  continuous  walls,  the  four  arches 
which  form  the  ends  of  the  interpenetrating 
barrel  vaults  having  sufficient  abutment 
and  support  from  the  four  piers  at  the  four 
corners  of  the  apartment.  The  edges  or 
lines  in  which  the  interpenetrating  barrel 
vaults  meet  are  called  groins,  and  these, 
taking  as  they  do  the  form  of  ellipses,  give 
its  name.  Whenever  an  elliptical  groin 
vault  was  used  by  a  Roman  architect  it  had 
of  necessity  to  be  placed  over  a  square 
apartment,  and  this  put  a  restriction  upon 
his  architectural  freedom. 

The  third  variety  of  Roman  vault  was  the 
hemispherical  dome.  As  its  name  implies, 
it  had  the  form  of  a  hollow  hemisphere.  It 
exerted  a  thrust  at  every  point  in  its  circum- 
ference, and  therefore  required  a  continuous 
abutment.  This  was  obtained  in  the  usual 
Roman  manner  by  massiveness  of  wall 
and  loading  and  weighting.  In  the  con- 
struction of  the  dome,  as  in  the  other 


CLOACA    MAXIMA,    AND    CIRCULAR    TEMPLE. 

forms  of  Roman  vaults,  the  designer  found 
himself  greatly  restricted  by  his  inability 
to  place  it  over  other  than  a  circular  apart- 
ment. 

When  the  Romans  began  to  use  the 
orders  they  modified  their  forms,  and  in- 
creased their  num- 
ber to  five,  and  al- 
though they  made 
some  constructive 
use  of  them,  they 
more  often  applied 
them  as  a  decorative 
screen  behind  which 
the  real  structure  of 
the  building  was  con- 
cealed. In  this  man- 
ner they  succeeded 


ELLIPTICAL  GROIN  VAULT. 

Exterior    view.     An   interior 
one  appears  in  the  cut  p.  779. 


in   making   fine   and 

imposing  fagades,  but  they  can  never 
be  said  to  have  obtained  that  intimate 
relationship  between  construction  and  dec- 
oration, that  logical  character  which  so 
exalts  Greek  architecture. 


i66 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


R 


OMAN    ARCHITECTURE:    FIVE 
ORDERS,  THE  COLOSSEUM.  (5) 


There   were    five   Roman    orders, 

and  several  of  these  were  often 
used  on  the  same  building.  These  orders 
were  the  Tuscan,  Roman  Doric,  Ionic, 
Corinthian  and  Composite.  The  Tuscan 
and  Roman  Doric  were  characterized  by 
the  thickness  and  heaviness  of  their  col- 
umns and  entablatures.  The  Tuscan  order 
had  no  ornament,  while  the  Doric,  which  in 


plinth  inserted  between  the  bases  of  the  col- 
umns and  the  substructure  or  foundation, 
and  often  a  square  basement  or  pedestal 
several  feet  high  was  placed  under  the 
plinth.  The  unfluted  shafts  of  the  Roman 
Corinthian  and  Ionic  orders  were  a  notice- 
able deviation  from  their  Greek  prototypes. 
These  latter  orders  as  used  by  the  Romans 
had  the  same  general  features  as  the  similar 
orders  when  used  by  the  Greeks.  The  Ionic 
capital  had  the  volutes  and  the  carved  egg  and 
dart  molding,  and  the  Corinthian  had  the 


I 


ROMAN    DORIC 
ORDER. 


ROMAN   IONIC 
ORDER. 


ROMAN    CORINTHIAN 
ORDER. 


ROMAN    COMPOSITE 
ORDER. 


form  differed  but  little  from  it,  had  a 
triglyph  frieze,  and  a  dentil  course  in  the 
cornice.  The  chief  difference  between  the 
Tuscan  and  Roman  Doric  orders  and  the 
Greek  Doric  lay  in  their  profiles  and  mold- 
ings. In  the  Greek  Doric  these  were  all 
bounded  by  free-hand  curves,  and  exhibited 
the  beauty  natural  to  such  lines,  that  living 
changefulness  which  expresses  vital  action; 
while  the  contours  of  Roman  moldings, 
shafts  and  capitals  were  most  commonly  of 
geometric  and  mechanical  design.  The 
Roman  orders  almost  always  had  a  square 


rows  of  leafage  and  the  angle  scrolls,  and 
both  had  bases  patterned  after  the  Attic- 
Ionic  base.  In  most  of  the  Roman  ex- 
amples, however,  the  refinement  of  the 
curves,  and  the  freehand  lines  of  the  foliate 
ornament  which  made  the  Greek  orders  so 
beautiful — and  beautiful  also  because  de- 
signed, not  imitated,  after  the  forms  of 
natural  vegetable  growths — gave  place  to 
geometrical  convolutions  and  straight  lines. 
Some  examples  of  beautiful  Roman  orders 
exist,  and  notably  the  Corinthian  order  of 
the  portico  of  the  Pantheon,  yet  even  its 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC 


167 


shafts  are  unflutecl.  The  Composite  order 
is  characteristic  of  the  exuberant  taste  of 
the  age  which  produced  it.  It  is  an  elab- 
orate compound  of  the  Ionic  and  the  Corin- 
thian. The  upper  row  of  leaves  on  the 
Corinthian  capital  give  place  to  corner 
scrolls,  enlarged  to  the  size  of  Ionic  volutes, 
but  placed  upon  the  diagonals  of  the  capital 
like  the  volutes  of  the  Corinthian.  The 
entablature  was  often  enriched  with  carved 
moldings,  frequently  piled  one  above  an- 
other so  that  the  good  points  of  the  decora- 
tion were  lost  sight  of  through  the  lack  of 
plain  surfaces,  so  important  in  any  piece  cf 
design  to  afford  contrasts  and  give  a  sense 
of  rest  to  the  eye,  as  well  as  an  opportunity 
of  appreciating  the  beauty  of  the  orna- 
ment itself. 

Roman  architects  from  the  time  of 
Augustus  to  that  of  Diocletian  were  re- 
quired to  design  buildings  on  a  scale  of 
unparalleled  magnificence.  Egyptian  kings 
built  tombs  and  temples ;  the  Greeks  erected 


*»» 


Most  conspicuous  among  the  buildings  of 
Rome,  ancient  or  modem,  is  the  Flavian 
amphitheater  or  Colosseum,  so-called  on 


PLAN    OF    THE   COLOSSEUM    IN    ROME. 

The  quarter  section  represents  the  substructure;  the  three-quarter  section 
the  tiers  of  seats. 


temples;  Roman  emperors  demanded  pal- 
aces, basilicas,  theaters  and  amphitheaters, 
baths,  memorial  arches  and  columns  as  well 
as  temples  and  tombs. 


ELEVATION   AND   SECTION   OF   THE   COLOSSEUM. 

account  of  its  colossal  size.  It  was  begun 
by  Vespasian,  and  completed  by  his  son 
Titus.  The  Colosseum  is  elliptical  in  plan, 
having  its  minor  axis  five-sixths 
of  its  major,  the  latter  meas- 
uring a  little  over  six  hundred 
feet.  The  outer  or  enclosing 
wall  is  one  hundred  and  eighty 
feet  high.  The  system  of  con- 
struction when  once  understood 
is  comparatively  simple,  as  may 
be  seen  in  the  cross-section  of 
the  building.  It  consists  of  tiers 
of  corridors  which  fill  the  entire 
space  between  the  wall  of  the 
arena  and  the  enclosing  wall, 
the  tiers  rising  against  that  wall 
and  diminishing  in  breadth  un- 
til at  the  top  there  is  but  a  sin- 
gle corridor,  thus  giving  to  the 
interior  the  shape  of  a  truncated 
cone,  small  end  downwards. 
These  corridors  are  separated 
from  one  another  by  walls  of 
great  thickness,  and  are  roofed 
with  barrel  vaults  which  follow 
the  elliptical  outline  of  the  build- 
ing. The  combined  thrusts  of 
these  vaults  outwards  are  counterbalanced 
by  the  great  thickness  of  the  outer  wall, 
helped  by  the  additional  weight  of  the  forty 
feet  of  wall  which  rises  above  the  impost  of 


1 68 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


THE    COLOSSEUM,    ROME. 


the  topmost  vault.  An  immense  load  is  put 
upon  all  the  vaults  by  the  terraces  of  stone 
seats  which  they  support.  These  seats  rise 
in  ever-increasing  ellipses  from  the  edge  of 
the  arena  to  the  highest  row  against  the 
outer  wall.  This  wall,  as  well  as  the  parti- 
tion walls,  is  pierced  by  many  round  arches 
which  give  easy  and  sufficient  access  from 
corridor  to  corridor  and  connect  them  all 
with  the  outside  world.  Staircases  lead 
from  story  to  story,  and  radiating  flights  of 
steps  lead  down  from  the  corridors  through 
the  seats,  in  a  manner  which  resembles  the 
passages  between  the  seats  of  a  modern 
theater.  The  arena,  which  occupied  an 
acre  of  ground,  was  furnished  with  a  sys- 
tem of  aqueducts  and  drains,  so  that  it 
could  be  flooded  and  emptied  at  will. 
This  was  for  the  convenience  of  the  sham 
sea-fights  which  the  Romans  so  much  liked 
to  watch.  Under  the  Colosseum  there  was 
stabling  room  for  hundreds  of  wild  beasts 


used  in  the  shows,  as  well  as  bathing  and 
dressing  rooms  for  the  contestants,  apart- 
ments for  gladiators  and  prisons  for  the 
captives  who  were  to  be  sacrificed. 

The  exterior  of  the  Colosseum  offers  an 
example  on  a  large  scale  of  the  inconsistent 
manner  in  which  the  Romans  sometimes 
used  the  orders.  The  constructive  prin- 
ciple of  the  building  is  the  arch,  yet  the 
numberless  arches  of  its  exterior  are  all 
subordinated  to  a  decorative  system  of  col- 
umns and  entablatures.  The  arches  do  the 
work  while  the  posts  and  lintels  are  made  as 
much  as  possible  to  appear  to  do  it.  The 
orders  are  not  used  constructively  but  deco- 
ratively. 

The  upper  row  of  seats  was  protected  by 
a  roof  which  reached  from  the  outer  wall  to 
a  circle  of  columns  which  stood  at  the  edge 
of  the  topmost  tier  of  steps;  otherwise  the 
Colosseum  was  open  to  the  sky.  Its  audi- 
ences were  protected  from  sun  and  rain  by 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC. 


169 


awnings  which  were  stretched  from  the 
cornice  of  the  roof  just  mentioned  to  masts 
fixed  in  sockets  about  the  seats.  These 
awnings,  which  were  often  of  rich  material 
and  high  colored,  must  have  greatly  en- 
hanced the  splendid  appearance  of  the  vast 
amphitheater.  With  an  audience  of  perhaps 
eighty  thousand  persons,  it  must  have  been 
a  spectacle  of  no  small  wonder  even  in  the 
prime  of  the  Roman  empire,  and  to  those 
who  think  their  own  the  age  of  greatest 
works  the  ruined  Colosseum  stands  as  a 
protest. 


R 


OMAN  ARCHITECTURE: 
ARCHES,  TEMPLES,  BASIL- 
ICAS. (6) 


No  monuments  are  more  typically 
Roman  in  spirit  and  in  style  than  the  arches 
which  were  erected  to  commemorate  the 
military  victories  of  the  emperors,  and  as 
well  known  as  any  is  the  Arch  of  Titus.  It 
was  raised  to  commemorate  the  conquest  of 
the  East  and  the  taking  of  Jerusalem  by 
Titus  in  70  A.  D.  It  consists  of  two  thick 
piers  which  support  a  barrel  vault,  and  by 
their  height  and  weight  make  it  secure. 
These  piers  are  decorated  with  an  engaged 
Composite  order  placed  upon  a  basement. 
A  pair  of  columns  flank  the  archway  upon 
each  side,  and  enframe  it  with  their  en- 
tablature. The  shafts  upon  the  angles  of 
the  archway  are  fluted,  while  those  upon 
the  outer  angles  are  plain.  Above  the 
entablature  there  is  an  oblong  mass  of 
masonry  called  an  attic  story.  The  use  of 
the  attic  was  peculiarly  Roman.  While  it 
served  a  contsructive  purpose,  it  likewise 
offered  a  conspicuous  place  for  inscriptions 
telling  of  the  glory  of  the  emperor  in  whose 
honor  the  arch  was  erected.  In  the  span- 
drels above  the  archway  there  were  carved 
winged  victories,  and  within  upon  the  walls 
where  none  who  passed  could  fail  to  see, 
there  were  bas-reliefs  showing  the  spoils 
from  the  temple  at  Jerusalem  carried  in 
triumphal  procession;  among  them  the 
golden  table  and  the  seven-branched  golden 
candle-stick.  In  its  proportions  the  Arch  of 
Titus  lacks  a  certain  refinement,  the  careful 


adjustment  of  one  part  to  another,  and  the 
still  more  careful  subordination  of  the  deco- 
rative details  to  the  great  masses  of  the 
design.  The  presence  of  such  refinement 
characterizes  the  best  Greek  designs,  and 
distinguishes  them  from  most  of  the  Ro- 
man. The  whole  arch  is  somewhat  clumsy, 
and  its  heavy  attic  gives  it  a  slightly  top- 
heavy  appearance. 

One    of    the    finest   and    best    preserved 
Roman    temples   is    the     so-called    Maison 


THE   ARCH   OP   TITUS   IN   ROME. 

Carree  at  Nimes.  The  whole  building  is 
about  one  hundred  and  twenty  feet  long 
and  fifty  feet  wide,  and  is  raised  upon  a  high 
basement,  the  use  of  which,  like  that  of 
attics,  is  peculiar  to  Roman  architecture. 
The  temple  includes  a  single  hall  or  cella 
preceded  by  a  deep  columnar  portico.  The 
cella  occupies  the  entire  width  of  the  base- 
ment, and  the  Corinthian  order  of  the  por- 
ticos is  carried  around  the  wall  as  an 
engaged  colonnade.  The  portico  has  six 
columns  across  the  front,  and  is  two  columns 


170 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


MAISON    CARREE    AT    NIMES. 


deep.  The  entrance  is  in  the  wall  at  the 
back  of  the  portico.  The  entablature  with 
its  carved  frieze  and  its  dentil  courses  in 
the  cornice  is  rich  and  beautiful.  While  such 
a  temple  differs  much  in  details,  its  base- 
ment and  its  engaged  colonnade  for  exam- 
ple, from  a  typical  Greek  temple,  it  has 
many  features  in  common  with  that  tem- 
ple, both  in  plan  and  in  structure.  It  may 
be  thought  of  as  the  result  of  Greek  and 
Etruscan  ideas  materialized  by  Roman 
hands. 

There  was,  however,  a  form 
of  temple  which  was  peculiarly 
Roman,  though  it  too  may  have 
had  an  Etruscan  origin ;  a  type 
of  building  which  had  a  marked 
influence  on  subsequent  archi- 
tecture,- the  circular  temple. 
There  is  such  a  building  still 
standing  in  Rome  and  another, 
the  much  admired  ruined  tem- 
ple at  Tivoli.  Each  had  a  cir- 
cular cella  surrounded  by  a 
circular  colonnade,  and  both 
were  comparatively  small  build- 
ings, the  one  at  Tivoli  having 
a  diameter  of  only  fifty  feet. 
But  it  was  not  such  temples  as 
these  that  influenced  subse- 
quent architecture.  It  was  the 
domed  buildings,  of  which  the 
best-known  example,  and  one 


of  the  most  renowned  buildings 
in  the  world  is  the  Roman  Pan- 
theon. The  precise  purpose  for 
which  it  was  intended  is  not 
certainly  known,  but  it  was 
probably,  as  its  name  implies, 
a  temple  dedicated  to  all  the 
gods.  The  building  dates  from 
the  reign  of  Hadrian. 

The  Pantheon,  being  a  build- 
ing vaulted  with  a  hemispher- 
ical dome,  had  to  be  circular, 
since  Roman  architects  never 
discovered  a  way  of  placing 
such  a  dome  over  an  apartment 
of  any  other  shape.  Its  circu- 
lar hall  is  one  hundred  and 
forty-two  feet  in  diameter,  and 
the  dome  is  one  hundred  and 
forty  feet  high.  The  enormous  thrust  of 
this  dome  is  met  by  a  wall  twenty  feet  thick, 
and  this  wall  is  carried  up  twenty  feet  above 
the  impost  of  the  dome.  Moreover,  the 
haunch  of  the  dome  is  loaded  with  six  ter- 
races of  masonry.  The  dome  is  made  of 
concrete,  but  running  through  it  from  side 
to  side  are  brick  arches  or  ribs,  which  act  as 
bonds  and  must  have  been  of  great  assist- 
ance during  the  process  of  construction. 
There  are  no  windows  in  the  walls,  but  the 
interior  is  lighted  by  a  great  circular  open- 


THE    PANTHEON,    ROME. 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC. 


'73 


INTERIOR    OF    THE    PANTHEON,    ROME. 


ing  or  eye,  placed  at  the  crown  of  the  dome. 
This  eye  is  forty  feet  in  diameter,  and  is  an 
original  as  well  as  perfect  method  for  light- 
ing the  hall,  for  through  it  the  light  falls 
equally  in  every  part. 

From  without  the  dome  makes  but  slight 
impression  of  grandeur  and  none  of  beauty 
'upon  the  mind. 

The  wall  of  the  interior  of  the  Pantheon 
is  divided  horizontally  by  an  entablature 
which  rests  upon  a  circle  of  Corinthian  col- 
umns and  pilasters.  A  deep  overhanging 
cornice  marks  the  springing  point  of  the 
dome.  The  upper  part  of  this  wall  is  deco- 
rated with  a  series  of  blind-windows,  while 
the  lower  part  is  relieved  by  a  series  of  seven 
niches,  semi-circular  alternating  with  rec- 
tangular. Six  of  these  niches,  three  each  to 
the  left  and  right  of  the  entrance,  are  treated 
like  the  fronts  of  small  temples  distyle-iri- 
antis,  that  is,  two  columns  stand  in  the 
entrance  to  each  niche,  while  the  angles 
are  marked  by  Corinthian  pilasters.  The 
seventh  niche,  that  opposite  to  the  entrance, 
has  no  columns,  but  is  entered  under  an 
archway.  While  these  details  may  not  be 


just  like  the  originals,  they  are  in  the  main 
similar.  The  dome  is  decorated  with  lines 
of  square  depressions,  called  coffers,  which 
radiate  from  about  the  eye.  The  coffers 
were  made  by  hewing  or  cutting  out  the 
concrete  after  it  had  set.  When  it  was  built 
the  interior  of  the  Pantheon  was  lavishly 
decorated  with  precious  marble  and  plates 
of  gilded  bronze,  and  must  have  been  very 
magnificent. 

The  effect  of 
the  rectangular 
temple  front, 
though  in  itself 
fine,  is  poor  as 
applied  to  a  cir- 
cular building. 
The  two  forms 
do  not  combine 
with  one  anoth- 
er gracefully  or 
naturally. 

In  the  later 
days  of  the 
r  e  p  u  b  1  i  c  and  pLAN  QF  THE  PANTHEON> 

throughout   the  ROME. 


J74 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


empire,  cases  at  law  were  argued  and 
judgments  given  in  halls  called  basilicas. 
These  -halls  also  served  other  purposes. 
They  were  often  very  large,  the  basilica 
of  Trajan  measuring  about  two  hundred 
by  four  hundred  feet.  Double  rows  of 
columns  ran  around  its  interior,  the  outer 
twenty  feet  from  the  walls,  the  inner  forty, 
thus  dividing  it  into  a  broad  central  space 
surrounded  by  two  narrower  aisles.  The 
roof  was  wood,  and  was  supported  by  the 
walls  and  columns.  At  one  end  there  were 
entrances,  and  at  the  other  a  semi-circular 
projection  called  an  apse.  This  was  vaulted 
with  a  half-dome  of  concrete,  constructed  in 
the  usual  Roman  manner.  The  aisles  in 
such  a  basilica,  public  or  civic,  as  it  was 
called,  were  frequently  used  by  the  bankers 
and  money-lenders,  the  broad  central  por- 
tion or  nave  by  the  merchants,  and  the  apse, 
apart  from  the  crowd  and  slightly  raised 
above  the  level  of  the  rest  of  the  building, 
by  the  court  and  judge.  To  the  Romans 
their  basilicas  were  of  the  utmost  impor- 
tance. They  were  the  visible  expression  of 
that  ever-present  spirit  of  law  and  order 
which  was  at  the  root  of  their  power. 
Roman  basilicas  were  larger  and  more  im- 
portant than  Roman  temples;  indeed,  they 
partook  of  a  sacred  character,  because  their 
apses  usually  contained  an  altar,  at  which 
sacrifice  was  made  before  entering  upon  any 
important  business. 

The  Palace  of  Diocletian  at  Spalatro,  on 
the  coast  of  Dalmatia,  dates  from  the  end  of 
the  third  century,  and  exhibits  some  remark- 
able deviations  from  the  normal  forms  of 
imperial  Roman  architecture.  One,  of 
great  importance  as  leading  the  way  towards 
the  medieval  styles,  is  the  use  of  arches 
sprung  directly  from  the  capitals  of  col- 
umns. In  the  courtyard  of  this  palace  the 
arches  of  the  arcade  spring  from  the  abaci 
of  Corinthian  columns,  and,  mutually  thrust- 
ing and  counter-thrusting  one  another,  are 
made  stable  by  the  great  piers  at  either 
end. 

Another  deviation  from  the  accepted 
classic  type  of  design  is  to  be  seen  in  the  so- 
called  Golden  Gate  of  the  north  wall  of  the 
palace.  It  has  a  decorative  arcade,  the 
small  columns  of  which  are  supported  upon 


corbels  or  brackets  which  project  from  the 
wall.  This  is  a  direct  violation  of  Roman 
precedent  in  the  use  of  orders,  the  shafts  of 
the  columns  having  no  continuous  support 
from  the  ground  up.  On  one  hand  it  shows 
a  lack  of  knowledge  of,  and  a  disregard  for, 
the  fixed  rules  applied  to  Roman  architec- 
tural forms;  on  the  other  a  dawning  spirit 
of  invention,  the  rigid  formality  of  classic 
architecture  giving  way  to  the  picturesque 
quality  of  medieval. 


R 


OMAN  ARCHITECTURE:    THE 
CHRISTIAN  BASILICA.  (7) 


The  last  general  persecution  of  the 
Christians  occurred  under  Diocle- 
tian, and  immediately  after  the  coronation  of 
Constantine,  in  306  A.  D.,  the  Christian  reli- 
gion was  recognized  as  salutary  and  legal. 
The  Christians  at  once  set  about  building 
churches,  and  the  earliest  of  these  was  the 
series  of  basilicas  erected  at  Rome,  Jerusa- 
lem, and  Constantinople.  The  Christian 
basilica  followed  the  private  basilica,  or 
great  hall  of  the  Roman  house,  as  its  model, 
rather  than  the  civic  basilica.  Its  aisles 
extended  along  only  the  length  of  the 
structure,  and  its  central  aisle  or  nave  was 
raised  above  the  side  aisles,  thus  making 
room  for  a  row  of  windows  or  clerestory 
just  below  the  roof.  The  history  of  Chris- 
tian architecture  from  the  time  of  Constan- 
tine to  the  close  of  the  middle  ages,  is  the 
history  of  changes  wrought  upon  classic  and 
earl)''  Christian  models,  by  different  races  of 
men  in  widely  separated  regions  of  Europe 
and  Asia,  and  dictated  by  the  exigencies  of 
each  particular  case,  and  the  invention  of 
the  builders.  The  one  and  notable  excep- 
tion was  the  Christian  architecture  of  Rome, 
which  from  Constantine 's  day  well  on  into 
the  middle  ages  remained  nearly  fixed  in 
style,  varying  from  century  to  century  only 
in  the  diminishing  skill  and  beauty  which  it 
displayed,  due  perhaps  to  the  extraordinary 
conservatism  of  the  Romans  and  the  general 
ignorance  and  misery  into  which  they  had 
fallen. 

At    Constantinople    and  Ravenna  a  new 
form  of  capital  and  a  new  style  of  decoration 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC. 


were  developed  during  the  sixth  and  seventh 
centuries,  but  in  Rome  the  classic  Corin- 
thian and  Ionic  orders  persisted.  One 
reason  for  the  changes  in  the  east  and  north 
was  that  in  those  regions  architects  had  for 
the  most  part  to  make  their  own  capitals  and 
decorations,  there  being  comparatively  few 
earlier  buildings  from  which  to  take  these 
things. 

Rome,  however,  furnished  an  almost 
unlimited  quantity  of  them.  It  has  been 
estimated  that  the  Forum  of  Trajan  alone 
contained  twelve  hundred  columns,  while  a 
single  basilica  had  its  roof  supported  by  one 
hundred  and  fifty. 

While  no  civic  basilica,  as  such,  was  con- 
verted into  a  Christian  church,  such  again 
and  again  furnished  the  actual  materials  for 
the  building  of  churches. 

In  general  the  Christian  basilicas  built 
between  400  and  1000  A.  D.  were  plain  brick 
on  the  outside,  crude  and  simple,  but  inside 
rich  with  carved  marble,  and  colored  and 
golden  with  mosaic. 

During  the  dark  ages  Rome  laid  off  her 
mantle  of  marble,  that  proud  boast  of  Au- 
gustus, and  again  appeared  as  a  city  of  brick 
and  concrete. 


BYZANTINE  ARCHITECTURE. (8) 
Although  after  400  A.  D.  Roman 
architecture  steadily  declined,  that 
of  the  Eastern  empire,  centering 
in  Constantinople — the  ancient  Greek  By- 
zantium, whence  the  term  Byzantine  art — 
developed  rapidly  and  produced  great  re- 
sults. The  finest  example  of  the  Byzantine 
style  is  the  church  of  Santa  Sophia  at  Con- 
stantinople, while  the  church  of  St.  Vitale 
at  Ravenna  is  important  because  it  is  the 
connecting  link  architecturally  between  the 
East  and  West.  Both  are  planned  about  equal 
axes — the  equal  armed  cross,  as  contrasted 
with  medieval  churches  whose  plans  have 
usually  the  form  of  the  Latin  cross.  St. 
Vitale  is  a  tentative  solution,  and  Santa 
Sophia  a  perfect  one,  of  the  problem  never 
attempted  by  Roman  architects,  namely, 
how  to  place  a  hemi spherical  dome  securely 
and  gracefully  over  a  square  compartment. 


PENDENTIVE. 


The  structural  invention  of  the  Byzantine 
style  which  solved  this  problem  was  the 
pendentive,  a  bracket  of  masonry  inserted 
into  the  angle  of  a  square  apartment.  This 
bracket  has  the  form  of  a  spherical  triangle 
which,  beginning  m  a  point,  gradually  in- 
creases until  at  its  summit  it  describes  a 
quarter  circle.  Four  such  pendentives,  one 
each  in  the  corners  of  a  square  apartment, 
will  obviously  meet  in  a  circle  at  their  tops, 
and  upon  this  circle  as  a  base  it  is  a  simple 
matter  to  construct  the  dome. 

The  dome  of 
St.  Vitale  rests 
upon  an  octago- 
nal basement,  a 
circle  upon  a 
polygon,  little 
pendentive- 1  i  k  e 
brackets  being 
placed  in  the  an- 
gles, thus  increas- 
ing the  width  of 

the  walls  at  the  points  where  the  circular 
base  of  the  dome  would  fall  most  outside 
its  polygon  foundations. 

In  St.  Vitale  a  two-storied  aisle  surrounds 
the  octagonal  space  beneath  the  dome  upon 
seven  sides,  while  upon  the  eighth,  that  fac- 
ing the  east,  there  is  a  rectangular  addition 
terminated  by  an  apse.  This  serves  as  a 
choir.  It  is  of  great  interest  on  account  of 
the  fine  early  mosaics  with  which  its  walls 
and  vault  are  decorated.  The  mosaic  of  the 
latter  is  very  rich  in  color.  In  each  of  its 
four  compartments  there  is  the  figure  of  an 
evangelist  standing  upon  a  globe,  while  the 
compartments  themselves  are'  framed  in 
with  garlands  of  fruit,  leaves  and  flowers; 
greens,  blues,  and  orange  being  the  pre- 
dominating colors. 

The  church  of  Santa  Sophia  in  Constanti- 
nople is  the  consummate  work  of  the  Byzan- 
tine style.  In  plan  it  is  an  equal  armed 
cross,  though  by  walling  in  and  vaulting  the 
re-entrant  angles  the  church  is  made  nearly 
square.  Over  the  central  square  compart- 
ment of  the  church,  carried  upon  four  mas- 
sive piers  and  arches  and  four  fully  devel- 
oped pendentives,  there  is  a  dome  ninety  feet 
in  diameter,  with  its  crown  one  hundred  and 
sixty  feet  above  the  pavement.  To  the  east 


I76 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


and  west  of  this  dome  there  are  two  half 
domes,  equal  in  span  to  the  great  dome  but 
much  lower,  being  so  arranged  as  to  abut 
the  central  dome  at  its  impost.  To  the 
north  and  south  the  thrusts  of  the  great 
dome  are  met  by  piers  of  masonry,  each  forty 


SECTION   OF   ST.    VITALE,    RAVENNA. 


feet  deep  and  twenty-five  broad.  The  half 
domes  which  abut  the  central  dome  are  sim- 
ilarly secured  by  a  pair  of  smaller  and  lower 
half  domes,  the  combined  thrusts  of  all 
being  carried  down  to  the  ground  by  piers, 
thick  walls  and  an  elaborate  system  of 
smaller  cross  vaults.  An  apse,  vaulted 
with  a  half  dome,  extends  slightly  beyond 
the  bounding  wall  towards  the  east,  while 
to  the  west  the  length  of  the  church  is  in- 
creased by  a  deep  porch. 

Upon  the  interior  the  lofty 
arches  between  the  piers  and 
under  the  pendentives  to  the 
north  and  south  are  filled  with 
stone  and  marble  screens,  won- 
derful pieces  of  design  as  well 
as  constructive  members  which 
materially  strengthen  the  build- 
ing, while  the  arches  to  the  east 
and  west,  opening  into  the  spaces 
beneath  the  half  domes,  are  left 
open.  This  arrangement  gives 
the  church  the  appearance  of 
having  a  long  nave,  like  the  nave 
of  a  basilica,  also  terminated  like 
one,  with  an  apse.  This  nave  is 
about  two  hundred  and  thirty 
feet  long  and  ninety  broad.  Its 
size  is  increased  wonderfully  in 
appearance  by  the  number  of  pen- 


dentives and  half  domes  which  lead  the  eye 
by  degrees  up  to  the  great  dome.  Its  crown  is 
visible  from  nearly  every  point  of  view, — a 
marvel  of  design.  The  details  of  the  interior 
are  as  noble  as  the  design  of  the  whole.  The 
lateral  screens  which  fill  the  arches  beneath 
the  great  dome  are  divided  into  five  stories. 
First,  there  arc  two  open  arcades  through 
which  one  looks  into  the  aisles  and  the  aisle 
galleries,  then  a  low  story  of  blind  arches, 
and  finally  a  double  tier  of  clerestory  win- 
dows, these  latter  cut  in  the  wall  that  fills 
the  head  of  the  arch.  These  screens,  in  the 
careful  proportioning  of  all  their  parts, 
height  of  column  and  breadth  cf  space,  offer 
a  fine  example  of  scale  in  architectural 
design.  The  ground  story  arcade  is  com- 
posed of  columns,  each  about  thirty  feet 
high.  It  is  finished  above  the  arches  by  a 
series  of  strongly  marked  moldings,  but 
nothing  that  bears  any  resemblance  to  a 
classic  entablature.  Nor  do  the  capitals  of 
the  columns  recall  those  of  any  classic  order. 
The  Corinthian  capital  which  had  been  so 
generally  used  for  centuries  was  concave  in 
form  and  decorated  with  foliate  sculpture  in 
high  relief.  It  was  designed  to  cany  a 
weight  of  superstructure,  light  in  compari- 
son with  the  high  walls  and  domes  placed 
upon  the  arches  which  formed  the  arcades  of 
Byzantine  buildings.  For  the  support  of 


PLAN    OF    ST.    VITALE,    RAVENNA. 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC. 


177 


INTERIOR    OF    SANTA    SOPHIA,    CONSTANTINOPLE. 


such,  the  Byzantine  builders  devised  the 
blocks  or  cubical  capital,  of  convex  form, 
the  surfaces  of  which  were  chased  and 
fretted  with  patterns  of  the  most  elaborate 
design,  but  such  as  could  neither  diminish 
nor  conceal  the  simple  and  serviceable  block, 
the  capital  itself.  No  finer  ornament  exists 
in  its  way  than  that  on  the  capitals  and 
spandrels  of  the  ground  story  arcades  of 
Santa  Sophia.  In  point  of  variety  and  grace 
of  line  it  is  superb.  It  has  the  refinement  of 
Greek  work  combined  with  the  sumptuous 
character  of  Roman  ;  but  it  is  neither  Greek 
nor  Roman.  It  is  Byzantine. 

The  interior  decorations  of  this  church, 
now  sadly  disfigured,  deserve  the  most  care- 
ful attention,  both  on  account  of  the  beauty 
of  design  and  the  preciousness  of  the 
material.  They  were  generously  lighted  by 
a  great  number  of  windows.  The  vaults 
were  encrusted  with  mosaics  and  the  walls 
with  colored  marbles  and  semi-precious 
stones.  The  columns  are  green  Thessalian 


and  red  Theban  marble,  and  every  costly 
stone  to  be  found  between  Arabia  and 
Switzerland.  The  walls  are  paneled  with 
slabs  of  marble  cut  crosswise  so  as  to 
show  the  veining,  and  often  the  individual 
panels  are  bordered  with  a  carved  stone 
molding.  In  the  lower  parts  of  the  church 
the  capitals,  spandrels  and  soffits  of  arches 
are  fretted  and  enriched  with  flat  carving, 
while  higher  up  where  such  decoration 
would  not  show  sufficiently,  the  patterns  are 
brought  out  by  inlaying  light-colored  stone 
with  daik.  The  patterns  on  the  second 
story  screen-arcades  are  wrought  in  black 
marble.  The  walls  of  the  great  church  are 
kept  in  one  general  tone,  and  the  vaults  in 
another.  There  is  no  wild  confusion  of 
colors,  produced  by  the  bringing  together 
of  a  heterogeneous  collection  of  stone, 
marble  and  mosaic,  though  each  in  itself 
be  of  the  most  exquisite  color  and  sub- 
stance. 

The  exterior  of  this  church  has  the  defect 


I78 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


common  to  all  early  Christian  architecture, 
an  almost  total  lack  of  beauty,  either  of 
construction  or  decoration.  Little  more  can 
be  said  of  the  outside  of  Santa  Sophia  than 
that  it  is  a  vast  and  clumsy  pile  of  brick, 


PLAN  OF  SANTA  SOPHIA,  CONSTANTINOPLE. 


lacking  any  salient  feature,  such  even  as 
would  have  emphasized  the  main  entrance. 
Another  but  later  expression  of  the  inti- 
mate relations  between  the  East  and  West  is 
to  be  found  in  the  Byzantine  edifices  of 
Venice,  most  notable  of  all  the  church  of  St. 
Mark,  completed  as  early  as  1054.  In  plan 
and  construction  it  bears  a  close  resemblance 
to  Santa  Sophia  of  Constantinople,  though 
differing  from  it,  and  all  earlier  buildings, 
in  its  splendid  exterior  decoration  of  colored 
mosaics  and  semi-precious  stones,  shafts 
of  veined  marble,  of  porphyry  and  verd 
antique,  with  capitals  of  alabaster  and  grills 
of  bronze,  consummate  skill  being  displayed 
in  the  combining  of  these  varied  materials, 
brought  from  far  and  wide  and  united  into  a 
harmonious  whole ;  the  most  gorgeously  and 
exquisitely  colored  building  in  Europe.  (See 
cut,  p.  171.) 


R 


OMANESQUE  ARCHITEC- 
TURE: LOMBARD,  BURGUN- 
DIAN,  RHENISH.  (9) 


With  the  passing  of  the  thousandth 
year  of  our  era  a  marked  improvement  be- 
gan to  show  itself  in  European  affairs,  and 
there  was  a  very  widespread  revival  of  build- 
ing in  the  eleventh  century.  A  monk  of 
Cluny  writing  at  this  time  says,  "It  is  as  if 
the  earth,  arousing  itself,  and  casting  away 
its  old  robes,  clothed  itself  with  the  white 
garment  of  churches."  This  took  place  in 
France,  Germany  and  Italy  alike;  and  the 
style  of  these  buildings,  though  differing  as 
widely  as  the  lands  in  which  they  were  built, 
is  called  Romanesque.  It  is  a  style  of  archi- 
tecture which  had  ceased  to  have  the  forms 
peculiar  to  the  Roman,  but  had  not  attained 
to  the  logical  constructive  system  of  the 
Gothic.  Romanesque  is  the  style  of  a  transi- 
tional period,  yet  in  no  sense  inferior,  for  to- 
it  belong  many  of  the  stateliest  churches  in 
Europe.  Romanesque,  in  the  parlance  of 
the  plastic  arts,  means  much  the  same  as 
Romance  in  that  of  language.  As  the 
changed  and  altered  speech  of  the  people  of 
Gaul  and  Italy  had  not  become  French  and 
Italian,  and  were  no  longer  Latin  in  the 
Romance  period,  so  the  buildings  of  Italy 
and  France  were  no  longer  classic  and  not 
yet  Gothic.  We  accordingly  hear  of  French, 
Italian  and  German  Romanesque;  more, 
even,  of  the  Tuscan  and  Lombard  Roman- 
esque in  Italy,  or  the  Norman  and  Burgun- 
dian  in  France,  as  the  lesser  divisions  of  the 
countries  of  Europe  developed  each  its  own 
peculiar  styles. 

The  earliest  and  constructively  the  most 
progressive  is  the  style  of  Northern  Italy, 
the  Lombard  Romanesque.  The  ancient 
church  of  San  Ambrogio  in  Milan  offers  the 
most  complete,  as  well  as  the  earliest,  ex- 
ample. Its  plan  includes  the  church  and  an 
atrium  which  precedes  it.  The  church  has 
a  nave,  and  side  aisles  each  half  as  wide  as 
the  nave.  Its  vaults  are  not  of  the  old 
Roman  type  requiring  vast  abutments,  nor 
built  of  concrete  and  requiring  extensive 
centering.  The  enclosing  surface  of  the 
vault  (the  roofing  surface)  is  supported  in 
separate  sections  upon  a  framework  of  inde- 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC. 


179 


pendent  stone  ribs,  or  arches.  Each  vault- 
ing compartment  is  square,  and  has  three 
pairs  of  ribs;  four  semi-circular  ribs  over 
the  four  sides  of  the  compartment,  and  two 
elliptical  ones  arching  the  compartment 
from  its  diagonally  opposite  corners.  A 
single  square  compartment  of  the  nave  is 
equal  in  width  to  two  of  those  of  the  aisles, 
and  these  aisles  are  in  two  stories,  while  the 
nave  is  in  one.  The  supports  upon  which 
the  ribs  rest  are  logically  designed  for  their 
office,  each  vaulting  rib  having  its  indi- 
vidual supporting  member  rising  from  the 
pavement  to  the  springing  of  the  arch.  The 
transverse  ribs,  those  which  cross  the  nave 
at  right  angles  to  its  long  axis,  rise  from 
rectangular  shafts,  while  the  diagonal  ribs 
rise  from  circular  shafts,  the  capitals  of 
which  face  in  the  direction  which  the  ribs 
take.  Lower  down,  reaching  from  the 
pavement  to  the  springing  of  the  ribs  of  the 
aisle  vaults,  there  are  five  shafts,  one  for 
the  transverse  aisle  rib,  two  for  the  diagonal 
aisle  ribs,  and  two  for  the  arches  of  the 
ground  arcade,  which  divides  the  nave  from 
the  aisles.  These  shafts  together  form  a 
compound  pier,  a  feature  very  unlike  any 
Roman  support.  The  intermediate  piers, 
so-called  because  one  is  placed  between  each 
pair  of  the  piers  which  carry  the  high  vaults 
of  the  nave,  are  similarly  designed  but  with 
fewer  members.  The  ribs  of  the  aisle 
vaults  on  the  outer  sides  of  the  aisles  rest 


constructed  like  those  of  the  side  aisles  them- 
selves, and  supported  by  low  piers,  one  above 
each  of  the  intermediate  piers  of  the  ground 
arcade. 

The  atrium  is  open  to  the  sky  in  the  mid- 
dle, and  is  surrounded  by  a  vaulted  aisle. 


-n — n — LLrrl  In Tl Tl 

— "W* 7W^ X  JL  •    •        J*  '    •'^*>  int 


PLAN    OF    SAN   AMBROGIO,    MILAN. 


upon  piers  or  thickenings  in  the  wall,  and 
at  each  of  these  points  there  is  additional 
strength  given  by  a  buttress  or  pilaster 
attached  to  the  outside  of  the  wall.  (See 
the  plan.)  The  vaults  of  the  galleries, 
called  triforium,  above  the  side  aisles,  are 


SAN   AMBROGIO,    MILAN. 

The  vaults  of  this  aisle  have  ribs  over  the 
four  sides  of   each   compartment,   but   lack 
the  diagonal  ribs.     The  diagonals  of   these 
vaults  are  simple   groins  like   those   of   an 
elliptical  groin  vault  of  Roman  construction. 
The   system    of    independent   ribs   for    the 
vaults,    and    the   compound   pier,    designed 
logically  for  the  support  of  such  ribs,  show 
a  change  from  all  former  styles  of  architec- 
ture, and  point   the  way  to   the 
constructive  system  of  the  Gothic 
cathedrals.     While  the  construct- 
ive system  of  San  Ambrogio  is 
of  greater   importance,    its   dec- 
orative   details   display   features 
which  are    characteristic  of   the 
Romanesque    style    wherever 
found.     Noticeable  among  these 
are  the  pilaster   strips,    rows   of 
pilasters  or  buttresses  often  con- 
nected at  their  tops  by  arches ;  and 
the    corbel   tables,  cornices  sup- 
ported upon  projecting  brackets,  such  as  that 
which  forms  the  ledge  of  the  triforium  in  the 
nave  of  San  Ambrogio.    Or,  again,  the  multi- 
plication of  the  members  of  arches,  the  archi- 
volts,  over  doorways,  or  in  arcades,  as  may 
be  seen  in  the  nave  just  mentioned,  and  a 


i8o 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


corresponding  multiplication  of  the  members 
in  the  piers  which  support  such  arches. 
The  capitals  of  the  pieis  of  San  Ambrogio 
are  especially  interesting  as  showing  the 
strength  and  boldness,  though  the  crudity  of 
the  conception,  of  the  Lombard  builders. 
They  are  in  a  high  degree  expressive  of  the 
loss  of  Roman  refinement  and  technique, 
yet  no  less  expressive  of  the  new  ideas  and 
methods  which  were  being  introduced  with 
the  fresh  barbarian  blood;  stock  from  which 
the  strength  and  the  nations  of  Europe  were 
then  arising. 

The  next  important  advance  in  vault  con- 
struction, beyond  that  attained  in  Lom- 
bardy,  was  made  in  the  province  of 
Burgundy.  The  Romanesque  style,  how- 
ever, as  practiced  in  almost  every  part  of 
Europe,  shows  a  high  degree  of  artistic  in- 
vention, there  being  a  marked  difference 
between  the  buildings  of  adjacent  provinces 
of  even  the  same  country.  As  examples, 
the  famous  and  picturesque  group  of  Pisan 
cathedral,  baptistery  and  leaning  tower,  or 
the  above  described  Lombard  church  of 
San  Ambrogio  in  Milan  might  be  cited. 
It  is,  however,  the  Burgundian  abbey 
of  Vezelay  in  Central  France  which  shows 
the  important  advance  just  referred  to. 
Its  nave,  built  during  the  twelfth  century, 
is  divided  into  oblong  compartments  by 
a  series  of  independent  transverse  ribs, 
while  the  vaulting  compartments  of  the 
aisles  are  square.  The  independent  ribs 
recall  the  Lombard  vaults,  but  there  the 
vaulting  compartments  are  square,  and  the 
vaults,  although  supported  by  a  system  of  in- 
dependent ribs,  are  of  the  Roman  form  wilh 
round  arches  over  the  sides  and  elliptical 
arches  over  the  diagonals.  This  oblong 
compartment  resulted  in  a  change  in  the 
method  of  vaulting,  and  prepared  the  way 
for  the  introduction  of  Gothic  vaults.  In 
Lombard  vaults,  as  in  the  Roman  elliptical 
groin  vault,  the  form  of  the  groins  was 
determined  by  the  nature  of  the  vault — by 
the  intersection  at  right  angles  of  two  barrel 
vaults;  but  the  Burgundian  builders  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  treating  the  groin  as  a 
starting  point,  by  constructing  semi-circular 
arches  over  the  diagonals  of  their  oblong 
vaulting  compartments,  as  well  as  semi-cir- 


cular ribs  over  the  four  sides  of  the  compart- 
ment. It  is  obvious  that  these  arches  and  ribs, 
being  semi-circular  and  having  different 
spans,  will  have  their  crowns  at  different 
levels,  and  hence  to  cover  the  space  with 
vaulting  surfaces  those  surfaces  must  be  in- 
clined upwards  from  the  level  of  the  lower 
ribs  to  the  level  of  the  higher  arches;  and 
such  inclination  giving  the  vault  a  somewhat 
domed  appearance  caused  this  form  of  vault 
to  be  called  the  domical  groin  vault.  In  one 
sense  such  a  system  of  vaulting  surpasses  that 
of  San  Ambrogio  because  it  permits  the  ar- 
chitect to  plan  his  vaulting  compartments  of 
shapes  other  than  square,  while  in  another  it 
falls  behind,  because  the  groin  arcliej  were 
not  given  a  S2t  of  independent  ribs.  But 
between  the  Lombard  and  the  Bargundian 
architects  great  freedom  had  been  gained 
for  the  designer  of  vaulted  structures.  It 
had  been  made  possible  for  him  to  construct 
cross  vaults  over  spaces  of  oblong  shape, 
and  to  construct  them  with  independent 
ribs,  and  so  dispense  with  a  complete  center- 
ing. To  combine  these  two  principles  and 
to  introduce  the  pointed  arch  for  the  sake  of 
constructive  convenience,  and  thus  give 
perfect  freedom  to  the  designer;  to  enable 
an  architect  to  vault  compartments  of  any 
shape,  square,  oblong,  triangular  or  curved 
in  plan,  remained  for  the  builders  of  the 
Ile-de-France,  the  inventors  of  Gothic  archi- 
tecture. 

The  cathedrals  of  the  Rhine  border,  those 
in  Mainz,  Speyer,  and  Worms,  are  perhaps 
most  commonly  thought  of  when  mention  is 
made  of  Romanesque  architecture.  Like 
the  Lombaid  churches,  but  unlike  most  of 
the  French  and  English,  these  German 
churches  were  built  of  brick,  their  huge 
masses,  high  gables  and  lofty  octagonal  as 
well  as  square  and  sometimes  circular  towers 
forming  picturesque  groups  as  they  rise  high 
over  the  houses  clustered  about  them. 
Mainz  was  probably  the  earliest  of  the  Rhen- 
ish churches  to  receive  a  complete  system 
of  vaults.  It  had  a  western  as  well  as  an 
eastern  transept,  and  likewise  two  apses, 
such  a  double  arrangement  being  character- 
istic of  this  style.  In  the  form  of  the  vault- 
ing compartments,  as  in  the  absence  of  a 
complete  system  of  ribs,  Mainz  recalls  the 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC. 


181 


church  at  Vezelay,  but  its  exterior  clearly 
distinguishes  it  and  its  class  from  the 
Romanesque  of  other  countries.  To  Ger- 
many seems  due  the  ciedit  of  having  first 
combined  the  tower  with  the  actual  build- 
ing, and  such  has  often  been  made  an  ele- 
ment of  great  beauty  in  church  architecture. 
The  original  use  of  towers  is  not  known,  but 
soon  after  the  introduction  of  bells  they 
were  used  as  belfries. 
When  used  in  later 
times  above  the  cross- 
ings of  churches,  as  for 
example  the  octagonal 
towers  of  Mainz,  they 
became  serviceable  for 
lighting  the  interiors, 
and  were  called  lan- 
terns. 


diagonals,  and  then  to  point  and  stilt  the 
ribs  upon  the  four  sides  of  the  compartment. 
Such  a  vault  was  always  somewhat  domed 
and  its  longitudinal  arches  usually  stilted, 
that  is,  the  sides  of  the  arch  were  carried  up 
vertical  for  some  distance  before  the  arch 
began  to  curve.  Suppose  a,  b,  c,  d  of  ac- 
companying figure  to  be  the  plan  of  the 
compartment  to  be  vaulted,  then  a,  c  and  b, 


G 


OTHIC  AR- 
C  H  I  T  EC- 
TUR  E  IN 
FRANCE(io) 


The  Romanesque 
style  led  to  the  Gothic, 
and  contained  many 
features  which  were 
adopted  by  it,  but  did 
not,  as  is  often  thought, 
change  into  Gothic,  for 
Gothic  implies  a  very 
important  constructive 
innovation  which  trans- 
formed alike  the  struc- 
ture and  the  appearance 
of  buildings.  This  was 
the  use  of  pointed  arch- 
es in  place  of  round  in 
the  building  of  vaults. 

The  pointed  arch  has  two  advantages,  for 
with  a  given  span  its  crown  may  be  made 
to  reach  any  height,  and  it  exerts  less  thrust 
than  the  round  arch. 

A  fully  developed  Gothic  vault  possessed 
a  complete  system  of  independent,  salient 
ribs:  transverse,  diagonal  and  longitudinal. 
The  vaulting  compartments  were  rrsnally 
oblong  and  the  method  of  vaulting  them  was 
to  construct  semi-circular  ribs  above  the 


THE    CATHEDRAL    OF    MAINZ. 

d  represent  the  diagonal  ribs,  and  these  are 
semi-circular,  as  shown  by  the  dotted  arch, 
d,  g,  b.  Now  round  arches  sprung  above 
the  sides  of  this  compartment  must  neces- 
sarily reach  a  less  height  than  the  similar 
arches  over  the  diagonals,  because  the  diam- 
eters of  the  former  are  shorter  than  those  of 
the  latter.  To  make  the  crowns  of  the  ribs 
over  the  sides  a,  b  and  d,  c,  reach  to,  or 
near  to  the  lever  of  the  crowns  of  the  diag- 


182 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


onal  ribs,  the  ribs  over  a,  b  and  d,  c  were 
made  in  the  form  of  pointed  arches,  as  shown 
by  the  dotted  lines,  d,  h,  c.  Finally  the 
ribs — longitudinal — above  the  sides  a,  d  and 
b,  c  were  not  only  pointed  but  were  also 
stilted  as  shown  by  the  dotted  lines  c,  k,  i, 
1,  b, — the  stilting  being  represented  by  c, 
k  and  1,  b.  Thus  the  Gothic  system  of 
vaulting  adopted  the  independent  ribs  of  the 
Romanesque,  and  likewise  its  doming, 
although  this  latter  was  still  earlier  used  by 
the  Byzantine  builders,  but  never  upon  any 
very  considerable  scale.  But  it  was  the 
introduction  of  pointed  arches  in  place  of 
round — a  thing  done  purely  for  the  sake  of 
utility — that  made  possible  the  vaulting  of 
compartments  of  any  shape  with  only  so 
much  doming  as 
was  agreeable  to 
the  eye,  and  with 
moderate  expend-  ^ 

itures    of     labor  /' 

and  material.   The  / 

use  of  pointed        /         „- — 


K- -----i-- 


•\ 


arches  lessened  the  amount  of  the  thrusts, 
and  enabled  the  builders  to  construct  their 
vaults  in  such  a  manner  that  the  thrusts 
might  be  gathered  along  fixed  lines,  and  at 
certain  points,  which  places  of  stress  could 
be  strengthened  by  piers  of  masonry  or  arches 
sprung  between  such  piers  and  the  places 
where  the  strengthening  was  needed.  The 
outer  piers  or  buttresses  were  made  heavy 
and  strong  enough  to  meet  and  overcome  all 
the  combined  thrusts  of  the  vaults  of  the  inte- 
rior, and  so  secure  the  equilibrium  of  the  en- 
tire structure.  Gothic  implies  a  building  in 
which  stone  vaults  are  supported  upon  a 
framework  of  independent  ribs,  a  skeleton 
as  it  were,  these  ribs  being  supported,  so  far 


as  their  vertical  weight  is  concerned,  by 
piers,  and  so  far  as  their  thrusts  are  con- 
cerned, by  a  system  of  arches  and  buttresses 
from  without;  an  active  Gothic  system  as 
opposed  to  an  inert  Roman. 

No  more  brief,  clear  and  exact  account  of 
a  typical  Gothic  building  could  be  given  than 
that  contained  in  chapter  I  of  Prof.  Charles 
H.  Moore's  work,  "Development  and  Char- 
acter of  Gothic  Architecture."  We  gladly 
avail  ourselves  of  it: 

"i.   The  plan  consists  of  a  central  nave, 
the   eastern    portion   of    which    forms    the 
choir,  with  side  aisles,   sometimes  one  and 
sometimes  two  on    each  side;    and    with  a 
transept  usually  also   provided  with  aisles. 
The  choir  terminates  eastward,  almost  in- 
variably, in  a  segmental  or  polyg- 
onal    apse,    or    sanctuary,    around 
which    the     aisles     are    continued. 
Opening   out  of    the  apsidal  aisles 
are  usually  a  series  of  small  chap- 
els, the  central  one  of  which  is,  in 
k  most  cases,  more  largely  developed 

\  than  the  rest.     The  transept   arms 

\\  have  commonly    rectangular  ends, 

and  the  west  end  of  the  nave  is  in- 
variably rectangular.     The  nave  is 
divided  from    the  aisles  by  a  row 
of  piers  on  each  side  which  support 
the  superstructure,  consisting  of  the 
triforium  and   the   clerestory.     On 
the  outer  sides  of    the    aisles  are 
half-piers,      or    responds,      against 
which  are  set  the  great  buttresses 
of  the  exterior,  and  the  spaces  be- 
tween them   are  enclosed  by  low  and  com- 
paratively thin  walls  with  openings  above 
them  reaching  from  pier  to  pier  and  up  to 
the  arch  of  the  aisle  vaulting. 

"2.  The  vaults,  whose  forms  and  propor- 
tions determine  the  number  and  arrange- 
ment of  the  piers  and  buttresses,  are 
constructed  upon  a  complete  set  of  salient 
ribs;  namely,  transverse  ribs,  diagonal  (or 
groin)  ribs,  and  longitudinal  ribs.  These 
ribs  are  independent  arches,  of  which  the 
transverse  and  longitudinal  ones  are  pointed, 
while  the  diagonals  sometimes  remain 
round.  Upon  these  ribs  the  vaults  rest — 
the  one  never  being  incorporated  with  the 
other. 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC 


'83 


"3.   The    ribs    are    sustained 
by    slender    shafts,    compactly 
grouped    and    often    engaged, 
bonded  by  their  bases  and  capr 
itals,   if    not    throughout    their 
length,     with    the    great    piers 
which  rise  from  the  pavement 
through   the   successive  stories 
of  the  building  to  the  nave  cor- 
nice.    In  addition  to  the  shafts 
which  support  the  main  ribs  of 
the   vault  are  shorter    ones  to 
carry  the  great  archivolts  (the 
arches   of   the   main    arcades), 
the  ribs  of  the  aisle  vaulting', 
and  the  arches  of  the  triforium. 
To  the  pier  is  added  a  rectan- 
gular   buttress    which    rises 
through  the  triforium  and  be- 
comes   an  external   feature   in 
the    clerestory.     Each    pier    is 
thus  a  compound  member  con- 
sisting of   a-  great  central  col- 
umn   with    which  are  incorpo- 
rated    smaller     shafts    and    a 
buttress.       By  these    piers  the 
vaults     are    supported  —  their 
thrusts    being    so     completely 
neutralized  by  the  external  but- 
tress system   that  they  require 
to   be   only  massive  enough  to 
"bear  the  weight  of  the  vaults. 
"4.   The  clerestory  buttresses 
are  re-enforced  by  flying  but- 
tresses, which  are  segments  of 
arches    rising    from    the   vast 
outer  abutments   (the  external 
members  of    the    responds   of 
the  aisles)  and  springing  over 
the  aisle  roofs.       These  flying  buttresses  are 
the  most  characteristic  features  of  the  Gothic 
•exterior. 

"5.  Walls  proper  are  almost  entirely 
omitted.  Those  that  are  retained  are  the 
low  enclosing  walls  of  the  ground  story,  and 
the  spandrels  of  the  various  arcades.  The 
spaces  between  the  piers,  and  beneath  the 
arches  of  the  vaulting,  in  both  clerestory 
and  aisles,  are  entirely  open,  like  the  inter- 
•columniations  of  a  colonnade.  They  are 
formed  into  vast  windows,  divided  by  mul- 
lions  and  tracery  which  support  the  iron 


INTERIOR    CATHEDRAL    OF    AMIENS. 


bars  to  which  the  glazing  is  attached.  It 
will  thus  be  seen  that  the  full  development 
of  the  Gothic  system  is  brought  out  only 
where  the  plan  of  the  building  includes  a 
high  central  nave  and  lower  side  aisles.  It 
was  in  such  buildings  that  the  system  was 
evolved.  The  active  principle  introduced 
with  the  flying  buttress,  as  opposed  to  the 
comparatively  inert  principle  of  the  Roman- 
esque wall  and  wall  buttress,  is  the  distin- 
guishing principle  of  Gothic  construction,  as 
we  have  already  remarked.  By  the  flying 
buttress  in  connection  with  the  pointed  arch 


184 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


in  the  ribs  of  the  vaulting,  and  a  peculiar 
adjustment  of  these  ribs,  ...  is  the  Gothic 
concentration  and  resistance  of  thrusts  ren- 
dered possible." 

One  of  the  finest,  as  well  as  the 
earliest,  buildings  in  the  Gothic  style  is 
the  Cathedral  of  Paris,  which,  consists  of 
a  nave  and  choir  of  nearly  equal  length, 
separated  by  transepts.  The  choir  termi- 
nates in  a  semi-circular  apse.  Both  the 
nave  and  the  choir  have  double  side  aisles 
which  continue  around  the  apse,  forming  an 
ambulatory  of  great  extent.  The  transepts 
project  but  slightly,  and  are  without  aisles. 
The  building  is  vaulted  throughout,  and  the 
supports  are  regular  and  circular  in  section, 
with  the  exception  of  the  two  westernmost 

on  each  side  of 
the  nave.  The 
JIXfL  Ml  ground 


story     story 


PLAN  OF  PARIS  CATHEDRAL:  NOTRE  DAME  DE  PARIS. 


piers  are  crowned  with  capitals  of  massive 
but  finely-designed  form,  from  the  square 
abaci  of  which  rise  the  shafts  for  the  sup- 
port of  the  vaulting  ribs. 

The  aisles,  which  are  double,  are  separated 
from  one  another  by  piers,  and  are  vaulted 
in  square  compartments  with  a  complete 
system  of  ribs.  Above  the  aisle  vaults  there 
are  triforium  galleries  which  open  upon  the 
nave,  while  still  higher  the  wall  rises  to 
the  springing  of  the  vaults.  The  original 
arrangement  of  the  clerestory  was  peculiar, 
as  may  be  seen  by  comparing  it  in  two 
adjacent  bays  of  the  nave,  in  one  of  which 
the  old  circular  and  pointed  openings  still 
remain. 

The  high  vaults  of  the  nave  and  choir,  as 
likewise  those  of  the  east  end,  are  secured 


from  without  by  flying  buttresses;  those  of 
the  apse,  says  Violett  le  Due,  "being not  less 
than  foity-five  feet  from  center  to  circum- 
ference; an  unique  accomplishment."  The 
west  front  of  Paris  is  a  design  as  temperate 
in  the  character  and  arrangement  of  its  deco- 
rative details  as  it  is  grand  and  simple  in  its 
main  divisions.  (Sec  the  cut,  p.  50.) 

The  nave  of  the  cathedral  of  Amiens, 
which  dates  from  1220,  exhibits  the  Gothic 
style  in  its  perfection.  It  is  one  hundred 
and  twenty-six  feet  high,  and  its  design  is  a 
marvel  of  logical  construction  and  exquisite 
beauty.  The  piers  which  support  the  vaults 
are  circular,  with  four  engaged  shafts. 
Those  which  carry  the  transverse  ribs  of 
the  high  vaults  rise  uninterruptedly  from 
the  pavement  to  the  capitals,  from  which 
the  ribs  spring.  The  other  three  ground 
shafts  carry  the  arches  of  the  arcades 
of  the  ground  story  and  the 
ribs  of  the  aisle  vaults.  The 
shafts  which  carry  the  diago- 
nal ribs  of  the  high  vaults 
rise  from  the  capitals  of  the 
ground  story  piers,  while 
those  which  support  the  lon- 
gitudinal ribs  rise  from  the 
level  of  the  triforium  string. 
(Seethecuts,pp.  130  and  183.) 
In  this  nave  no  walls  can 
properly  be  said  to  exist,  the 
windows  occupying  the  en- 
tire space  included  between 
the  longitudinal  ribs,  their  supporting  shafts 
and  thereof  above  the  triforium  vaults.  The 
whole  structure  has  a  vast  skeleton  of  piers 
and  arches  which  carry  the  vaults,  the  thrusts 
of  which  are  counterbalanced  by  the  double 
arches  of  the  flying  buttresses.  In  the 
aisles  all  the  space  between  the  buttresses 
and  below  the  longitudinal  ribs  is  occupied 
by  windows.  These,  like  the  vast  clere- 
story windows,  are  divided  by  stone  traceries 
into  richly  designed  compartment?,  which 
are  filled  with  stained  glass,  the  tinted  light 
from  which  not  only  gives  color  to  the  gray 
stone  work,  but  constantly  varied  color, 
according  as  the  light  diminishes  or  in- 
creases in  intensity.  .  (See  the  cut,  p.  137.) 

The  manner  in  which  the  clerestory  and 
the  triforium  of   Amiens  are  designed,  by 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC. 


185 


which  both  are  made  parts  of  a  single  great      the  result  of  organic   necessity,"   and  it  is 
composition,  and  finally  the   way  in  which      this  quality  which,    more    than   any   other, 

insures  the  beauty  of  Gothic  architecture; 
which  insured  the  beauty  of  the  best  Greek 
architecture,  and  will  insure  beauty  to  any 
architecture  that  shall  yet  be  created. 

There  are  comparatively  few  churches  in 
France  which  have  spires,  but  among  those 
few  there  are  enough  to  show  what  the 


;     ,-'      '    : 


CAPITAL    FROM    GROUND   ARCADE   IN  THE   CATHEDRAL   OF 
PARIS. 


this  composition  is  joined  to  the  arcade  be- 
low, in  which  every  part  clearly  expresses 
its  own  function  and  yet  all  together  are  but 
the  members  of  one  vast  whole,  is  unsur- 
passed in  the  architecture  of  any  age. 
Throughout  this  nave  no  part  exists  inde- 
pendently of  the  other  parts,  yet  none  is  SD 
prominent  as  to  attract  undue  attention. 
Truly,  "every  member  shows  the  result  of  a 
constructional  necessity,  just  as  in  the  ani- 
mal and  vegetable  kingdoms  there  is  no 
phenomenon,  no  individuality  which  is  not 


SPIRE   OF   THE   CATHEDRAL   OF   SF.NLIS. 
From  the"  Gothic  Architecture"  of  C.  H.  Moore,  by  permission. 


Gothic  spire  was  like:  to  show  how  of  all 
the  features  which  individualize  the  Gothic 
work  of  the  thirteenth  century  none  does  so 
more  beautifully  than  the  spire,  and  no  spire 
in  France,  or  in  the  world,  can  surpass  that 
of  the  cathedral  of  Senlis. 

The  fifteenth  century  Gothic  style  devel- 
oped peculiarities  of  detail  which  gave  rise 

TWO    BAYS    IN    THE    CLERESTORY    OF    THE    CATHEDRAL   OF  .,  rM  v.  a  VI  T<t 

PARIS  to  the  term  Flamboyant — flame-like.     The 

From  the  "Gothic  Architecture"  of  c.  H.  Moore,  by  permission,      finely  proportioned  masses  and  the  simple 


i86 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


BHHH 


traceries,  and  spires  of  the  thirteenth  and 
early  fourteenth  century  gave  place  to  all 
sorts  of  extravagant  and  even  fantastic  de- 
signs. Interiors  weie  made  to  look  high  by 
the  omission  of  capitals  from  the  heads  of 
piers  and  vaulting  shafts;  open  work  gabies 
were  raised  above  doors  and  windows,  and 
spires  were  made  to  appear  airy  by  elaborate 
perforations  and  the  addition  of  flying  but- 
tresses where  such  had  no  structural  signifi- 
cance. In  short,  the  logical  character  of  the 
early  Gothic  buildings  was  wholly  disre- 
garded by  the  designers  of  the  later  struc- 
tures, such,  for  example,  as  the  church  of 
St.  Maclou  at  Rouen.  The  sculptured  orna- 
ment upon  capitals  and  moldings  shows  a 
similar  disregard  for  the  forms  and  func- 
tions of  the  members  decorated. 


P 


OINTED     ARCHITECTURE     IN 
ENGLAND,  (n) 


CHURCH    OF    ST.    MACLOU,    ROUEN. 


As  might  be  expected,  the  superb 
twelfth  and  thirteenth  century 
Gothic  cathedrals  of  France  soon  inspired 
imitation  on  the  pait  of  the  builders  of  the 
other  countries  of  Europe.  But  the  Gothic 
style — one  which  depends  primarily  upon 
certain  fixed  laws  of  structure,  which  produce 
characteristic  features  both  of  the  external 
and  the  internal  appearance — was  never 
thoroughly  comprehended  by  the  Italians, 
Germans  or  English,  the  Spaniards  or  the 
Dutch.  The  few  structurally  Gothic  churches 
outside  of  France,  the  cathedral  of  Cologne 
and  the  choir  of  the  cathedral  of  Canterbury, 
were  copied  directly  from  French  churches, 
and  very  probably  built  under  the  superin- 
tendence of  Frenchmen.  Not  understand- 
ing the  principles  of  Gothic  construction, 
but  admiring  the  general  aspect  of  Gothic 
architecture,  and  hastily  assuming  that  the 
pointed  arch  with  certain  attendant  details  of 
decoration  constituted  Gothic,  other  peoples 
took  up  the  pointed  style  as  a  fashion,  and 
erected  in  it  noble  and  beautiful  churches. 
The  English  cathedrals  have  one  striking 
peculiarity  of  plan,  which  separates  them 
widely  from  those  of  France,  namely,  the 
square  east  end.  Double  transepts,  both 
towards  the  east,  are  likewise  common,  while 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC. 


187 


the  stone  vaults  of  the  French 
churches  frequently  give  place 
to  timber  ceilings  in  the  Eng- 
lish. 

There  are  three  principal 
varieties  of  English  pointed 
architecture,  based  upon  the 
three  kinds  cf  windows  used. 
The  earliest  in  point  cf  time, 
and  the  simplest,  are  the  lancet 
windows:  tall  narrow  windows, 
with  pointed  arches,  and  no  di- 
visions or  traceries.  The  sec- 
ond is  called  decorated;  in  it 
the  point  of  the  window  is  filled 
with  rich  tracery,  sometimes 
geometrical  and  sometimes 
flamboyant.  The  window  be-  . 
low  the  point  is  often  divided 
by  vertical  mullions.  The  third 
variety  is  called  perpendicular, 
because  the  mullions  which 
divide  the  window  into  vertical 
sections  run  up  through  the 
tracery  of  the  point  of  the  win- 
'dow  and  penetrate  its  bound- 
ing arches.  In  the  latter  style, 
which  is  often  called  Tudor,  the 
window  is  frequently  divided  horizontally  by 
transoms,  and  each  rectangular  section,  en- 
closed by  the  vertical  mullions  and  the  hori- 


LINCOLN  CATHEDRAL. 


ANGEL  CHOIR  IN  LINCOLN  CATHEDRAL. 

zontal  transoms,  is   treated  like  a  separate 
window  and  given  a  tracery  point  of  its  own. 
The  vaulting  of  the  English  churches  varies 
as  much  as  their  win- 
dow traceries,  the  no- 
ticeable feature  being 
the    tendency  to   add 
ribs    which    have    no 
structural    use.      This 
led  to  stellar  vaulting: 
that  in  which  the  vault 
surfaces    are    covered 
with     projecting    ribs 
which    form    star-like 
^v    patterns. 

The  angel  choir  of 
Lincoln  serves  to  il- 
lustrate the  tendency 
of  the  decorated  style 
to  overornamentation. 
Upon  comparing  this 
choir  with  an  early 
piece  of  Gothic,  such 
as  the  nave  and  choir 


i88 


ARCHITECTURE:  GREEK,  ROMAN, 


of  Paris  or  the  nave  of  Amiens,  it  will  be 
found  inferior  in  almost  every  particular. 
Notice  how  very  broad  and  depressed  the 
arches  of  the  lower  arcade  appear  when  com- 
pared with  the  aspiring  arches  of  Amiens. 

Note  also  the 
many  sharp 
lines  of  light 
and  shade 
produced  by 
the  many 
moldings  of 
its  archi- 
ve Its.  The 
noblest  re- 
finements of 
architectural 
design,  re- 
pose an  d 
s  i  m  p  1  i  c  ity, 
are  lacking. 
Again,  the 
vaulting  ribs, 
more  in  num- 
ber than  are 
required,  are 
not  logically 
supported. 
The  longitu- 
dinal ribs 
have  no 
shafts,  while 
the  others 
are  carried 
upon  groups 
of  short 
shafts,  which 
rest  upon 
great  proj- 
ecting brack- 
ets, ungainly 
in  form  and 
o  ve  rorna- 
m  e  n  t  e  d  . 
These  brack- 
ets serve  only 

to  emphasize  the  fact  that  the  vault  has  no 
logical  relation  with  the  piers.  The  clere- 
story is  small  and  low.  Notwithstanding  the 
wealth  of  ornamental  detail  in  this  choir, 
it  lacks  the  grand  simplicity  of  real  Gothic 
works. 


FLORENCE    CAMPANILE. 


The  crowning  glory  of  the  English  cathe- 
drals are  their  towers,  of  which  there  are  na 
finer  examples  than  those  at  Lincoln,  par- 
ticularly the  tower  above  the  crossing.  Its- 
masses  are  beautifully  proportioned,  and  its 
three  stories  delightfully  related  to  one  an- 
other in  height,  while  its  elaborate  decora- 
tions are  so  carefully  disposed  as  nowhere  to 
conceal  the  fine  effect  of  the  great  whole. 
They  lend  dignity  only  to  a  very  noble  pile. 


P 


OINTED  ARCHITECTURE  IN 
ITALY.  MOHAMMEDAN 
ARCHITECTURE.  (12) 


Into  Spain  and  the  Netherlands 
as  well  as  into  Germany  the  Gothic  style 
was  in  some  instances  imported  in  its  en- 
tirety, but  in  many  more  it  was  but  partially 
understood  and  for  the  most  part  super- 
ficially copied.  The  same  thing  occurred  in 
Italy.  The  Italians  pointed  their  windows 
and  their  doorways,  and  often  they  vaulted 
their  churches,  but  never  in  the  Gothic 
manner.  The  pointed  style  in  Italy  was  but 
a  passing  fashion,  and  that  land  soon  re- 
turned to  its  round  arches  and  domes,  the 
rightful  inheritance  from  its  great  past. 
Yet  in  this  style  the  Italians  produced  some 
works  of  unsurpassed  loveliness,  and  such 
an  one  is  the  bell  tower,  275  feet  high,  of 
the  cathedral  of  Florence — Giotto's  Tower, 
as  it  is  called  from  the  name  of  its  famous 
designer. 

It  is  square  in  plan,  with  its  four  angles 
emphasized  and  strengthened  by  octagonal 
turrets.  The  walls  are  very  thick,  and  the 
interior  is  divided  into  chambers  by  cross 
vaults.  It  is  the  design  of  its  five  stories 
which  constitutes  the  just  claim  of  this  cam- 
panile to  extraordinary  beauty.  The  design 
is  organic  in  a  high  degree.  The  fact  that 
the  nearer  the  top  the  less  is  the  weight  to 
be  supported,  is  expressed  by  the  increase 
in  the  height  and  breadth  of  the  windows. 
The  lowest  story  is  decorated  with  two 
bands  of  bas-reliefs,  the  lower  hexagonal 
and  the  upper  diamond  shaped,  so  small 
and  so  exquisitely  chiseled  that  they  be- 
come objects  of  the  greatest  interest  to  him 
who  is  so  near  the  tower  that  he  ceases  to- 


BYZANTINE,  ROMANESQUE  AND  GOTHIC. 


189 


see  it  as  a  whole,  but  to  him  who  is  at  a 
distance,  not  conspicuous  enough  to  with- 
draw attention  from  the  simple  massiveness 
of  the  basement.  The  upper  section  of  the 
basement  is  likewise  divided  horizontally 
into  two  bands :  the  lower,  a  series  of  shal- 
low niches,  separated  from  one  another  by 
pilasters,  in  which,  standing  each  beneath  a 
pointed  canopy,  are  the  statues  of  prophets 
and  saints;  the  upper,  a  flat  surface  covered 
with  a  pattern  resembling  the  forms  of  the 
niches  below,  but  laid  up  smooth  in  black, 
green  and  pale  pink  marble.  A  deep  over- 
hanging cornice  and  an  open  parapet  crown 
the  entire  edifice.  Throughout  the  design 
there  is  unity;  unity  in  the  whole  and  in 
the  parts.  When  the  individual  elements, 
the  stories  for  instance,  are  examined,  each 
is  found  to  be  complete  in  itself;  to  have  its 
own  base  and  crown,  foundation  and  cornice, 
as  has  the  whole  tower.  But  the  effect  of 
these  horizontal  members,  which  in  many 
buildings  give  the  stories  the  appearance  of 
so  many  boxes  piled  one  on  another  and 
tend  to  lessen  the  look  of  height,  is  here 
counteracted  by  the  vertical  lines  of  the 
angle  turrets,  the  pilasters  below,  and  the 
twisted  spiral  mullions  of  the  windows 
above,  as  well  as  by  the  vertical  lines  of  the 
wall  inlays.  It  is  the  Campanile  of  Flor- 
ence which  Ruskin  speaks  of  as  "that  serene 
height  of  mountain  alabaster,  colored  like  a 
morning  cloud  and  chased  like  a  sea-shell." 

It  would  be  a  grave  error  to  suppose  that 
during  the  dark,  and  especially  during  the 
middle,  ages  there  was  no  architecture  other 
than  that  of  churches.  Men  built  fortresses 
and  castles,  city  gates  and  walls  and  prisons, 
and  later  they  built  palaces  and  town  halls. 

Arabian  architecture  grew  up  for  the 
most  part  upon  early  Christian,  especially 
on  Byzantine,  models  of  construction,  with 
a  large  admixture  of  Asiatic  elements.  Into 
every  land  that  the  Arabian  religion  found 
its  way  the  Arabian  style  took  on  some  of 
the  characteristic  features  of  the  native 
styles:  in  Egypt  a  rigid  and  solid  character, 
and  in  India  a  luxurious  nature.  Every 
kind  of  representation  of  man  or  animal  was 
forbidden  by  the  Mohammedan  creed,  and 
this  of  course  had  a  marked  effect  upon  the 
nature  of  the  decorations,  which  became 


THE  ALHAMBRA  AT  GRANADA. 

wonderfully  rich  in  geometrical  and  con- 
ventional forms  and  coloring,  as  may  be 
seen  in  the  mural  decorations  of  the  Alham- 
bra,  especially  upon  the  walls  of  the  Court 
of  Lions.  The  use  of  the  horseshoe  arch 
and  of  pointed  arches  is  also  characteristic 
of  the  style,  whether  in  Cairo  or  Granada. 
The  dome  and  the  minaret  are  the  notice- 
able features  of  the  exterior  of  the  Moham- 
medan mosque  As  a  style,  whether  in 
ecclesiastical  or  domestic  architecture,  it  has 
had  little  subsequent  influence;  and  this  is 
well,  for  although  it  contains  much  that  is 
very  attractive  and  sometimes  beautiful,  it 
is  too  often  fantastic;  and  is  noticeable  only 
because  of  its  illogical  construction  and  its 
unrestrained  ornamentation. 


CHURCH    OF    S3.    ANNUNZIATA     (LEFT     HANDV    HOSPITAL     OF     THE     INNOCENTS    (RIGHT     HAND,    SEE     PAGE    19?),    AND 
STATUE    IN    BRONZE    OF    GRAND-DUKE    FERDINAND    I,    BY    G.    DA    BOLOGNA,    IN    FLORENCE. 


Architecture:   Renaissance  and  Modern. 


H.  LANGFORD  WARREN, 

PROFESSOR    OF    ARCHITECTURE,    HARVARD    UNIVERSITY. 


T 


HE  CONDITIONS  UNDER 
WHICH  RENAISSANCE  ARCHI- 
TECTURE  IN  ITALY  WAS 
PRODUCED.  (13) 


The  origin  and  development  of  the  archi- 
tectural styles  cannot  be  understood,  nor 
their  significance  appreciated,  without  some 
knowledge  of  the  conditions  of  civilization 
and  environment  which  gave  rise  to  them. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  no  architectural 
style  was  ever  consciously  invented,  out  of 
whole  cloth  as  it  were,  by  any  single  man  or 
group  of  men.  The  styles  of  architecture 
have  resulted  from  more  or  less  unconscious 
and  gradual  development,  very  much  as 
languages  and  dialects  have  come  into 
being. 

The  architecture  of  the  Renaissance  origi- 
nated like  that  movement  itself  in  Italy.  In 


the  condition  of  the  world  at  that  time  it 
could  have  originated  nowhere  else.  Re- 
naissance architecture  is  usually  said  to  have 
begun  in  Florence  about  1420,  when  its  first 
consistent  and  complete  manifestations  ap- 
pear; but  to  find  its  germs  we  must  go 
back  to  the  early  middle  ages,  and  if 
we  are  thoroughly  to  understand  the  va- 
rious elements  that  are  found  in  it  we  must 
trace  the  history  of  the  architecture — not 
only  of  Italy — but  of  Europe  from  its  begin- 
nings. 

During  the  whole  of  the  middle  ages  Italy 
differed  in  many  respects  from  the  countries 
north  of  the  Alps.  It  is  true  that  all  over 
Europe  many  of  the  fundamental  elements 
of  civilization  were  drawn  from  the  wreck  of 
ancient  Rome.  But  in  Germany,  France  and 
England  these  elements  were  so  assimilated 
and  changed,  so  intermingled  with  charac- 


190 


ARCHITECTURE:  RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


191 


teristics  purely  northern,  as  to  lose  all  sem- 
blance of  classic  character  and  to  become 
thoroughly  medieval.  In  these  countiies  the 
direct  influence  of  ancient  Roman  civiliza- 
tion was  hardly  felt  at  all,  and  the  northern 
barbarians,  as  they  gradually  became  more 
civilized,  developed  institutions  and  arts  dis- 
tinctively their  own.  Here  the  feudal  system 
flourished  in  all  its  completeness,  and  here 
also  the  various  medieval  styles  of  architec- 
ture developed,  with  a  consistency  hardly 
possible  in  Italy,  culminating  finally  in  the 
development  of  the  glorious  Gothic  style  of 
France  which,  with  various  modifications, 
spread  over  all  northern  Europe,  and  was 
imported  even  into  Italy. 

Italy,  during  this  period,  in  spite  of  its 
having  been  so  repeatedly  overrun  by  the 
northern  barbarians,  in  spite  of  the  strange 
intermingling  of  races  on  its  soil,  still 
retained,  especially  in  the  cities,  some  dis- 
tinct and  recognizable  elements  of  the 
ancient  civilization.  It  could  not  entirely 
forget  its  ancient  greatness,  of  which  it  was 
constantly  reminded  by  the  classic  ruins 
which  abounded.  The  nearness  of  Rome 
itself,  the  existence  of  the  papacy,  even  the 
peculiar  relations  of  Italy  to  the  German 
Emperors,  who  were  regarded  as  the  succes- 
sors of  the  Emperors  of  ancient  Rome,  all 
conspired  with  the  traditions  of  classic  civi- 
lization to  weaken  the  feudal  system  and  to 
strengthen  the  power  of  the  cities,  successors 
and  heirs  of  the  ancient  Roman  municipia, 
and  the  strongholds  of  civilization.  Medi- 
evalism in  Italy  was  constantly  modified  by 
the  overshadowing  presence  of  the  Roman 
tradition.  During  the  whole  of  the  middle 
ages,  therefore,  Italy  was  not  only  more 
Roman,  but  more  civilized  than  northern 
Europe. 

Under  these  circumstances  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  we  constantly  find  the  develop- 
ment of  medieval  architecture  in  Italy 
modified  and  qualified  by  classic  ideals  and 
by  traditions  of  classic  form. 

We  shall  see  specifically  in  the  next  lesson 
just  what  essentially  classic  elements  existed 
in  the  medieval  architecture  of  Italy,  espe- 
cially in  Tuscany,  which  retained  more 
of  classic  tradition  than  any  other  prov- 
ince. 


Let  us  now  glance  at  the  conditions  which 
led  to  the  new  development  out  of  which 
sprang  Renaissance  architecture. 

The  Renaissance  was  much  more  than  a 
mere  revival  of  classic  forms,  whether  in  lit- 
erature or  in  art.     This  revival  was  indeed 
but  an   incident  in  a  movement  of   much 
wider  reach  and  deeper  significance.      The 
Renaissance  was  a  great  awakening  to  totally 
different  conceptions  of  life,  of  man's  nature, 
of  the  woild:  the  beginning  of  the  modern 
point  of  view  and  of   modern  civilization. 
The  vision  of  the  man  of  the  middle  ages 
was    restricted    in    every   direction,    to   an 
extent  now  difficult  to  conceive.     He  knew 
as  a  rule    but   little  of  the   world   outside 
of    the    district   surrounding   his  own   city. 
Merchants,    artisans   and   soldiers    traveled 
indeed  in  the  pursuit  of  their  several  voca- 
tions; but  even  for  them  the  world  was  nar- 
rowly circumscribed.     It  was  surrounded  by 
an    unknown    region   of    unknown    extent. 
The  knowledge  of  nature  and  of  man  was 
equally  limited.     There   was  but  little  con- 
sciousness   of    individuality,  as    Burckhardt 
says,  "Man  was  conscious  of  himself  only  as 
a  member  of  a  race,  people,  party,  family  or 
corporation — only  through  some  general  cat- 
egory."      A  strongly   developed    corporate 
life  was  one  of  the  most  marked  and  one  of 
the  noblest  characteristics    of    the    middle 
ages.      Patriotism    thus    limited    and    thus 
intensified — the  fatherland  embracing  for  the 
most  part  only  the  city  and  its  adjacent  dis- 
trict— was   vivified   by   a   strong   and   deep 
religious  faith,  not  less  real  because  marred 
by    superstition    or     clouded     by    passion. 
Under  these  conditions  freedom  of  thought 
could  hardly  exist,  and  the  domination  of  the 
church  still  farther  prevented  its  develop- 
ment. 

The  Renaissance  was  the  great  awaken- 
ing, the  breaking  of  the  old  fetters  that  lim- 
ited man's  life  and  thought. 

It  will  be  quite  clear  from  what  has  been 
already  said  that  this  awakening  would 
naturally  take  place  in  Italy.  It  did  not 
come  all  at  once,  but  by  degrees.  Its  suc- 
cessive stages  may  be  traced  in  Italy  through 
the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  from 
before  the  time  of  Dante  to  the  time  of 
Petrarch  and  Boccaccio.  Men  become  anx- 


192 


ARCHITECTURE: 


ious  to  know  something  of  their  own  char- 
acter, and  the  character  of  the  world  in 
which  they  live.  The  spirit  of  enquiry  is 
aroused.  Freedom  of  thought  takes  the 
place  of  faith,  and  religion  suffers  in  the 
overthrow  of  the  superstitions  with  which  it 
has  been  associated.  Men  become  conscious 
of  themselves  as  individuals;  and  individual 
development,  individual  life  takes  the  place 
of  corporate  development  and  corporate  life. 
The  healthy  life  and  activity  of  the  medieval 
city  is  overthrown  by  individualism.  Indi- 
vidual tyrants  take  the  place  of  the  old  cor- 
porate republics,  and  unconsciously  prepare 
the  way  for  the  broader  but  individualistic 
republicanism  of  modern  times.  The  mod- 
ern idea  of  individual  fame  comes  in  as  one 
of  the  strongest  motives  of  action.  Ai  I  he 
men  of  Italy  thus  awakened  to  this  new 
activity  it  was  but  natural  that  they  should 
more  and  more  look  back  to  their  idealized 
past  in  ancient  Rome.  It  thus  happened  that 
the  revival  of  classic  learning  was  associated 
with  the  great  awakening,  and  largely  qual- 
ified its  development.  Men  imagined  that 
they  were  restoring  the  civilization  of 
ancient  Rome,  neither  realizing  on  the  one 
hand  how  much  of  really  new  there  was  in 
their  movement,  nor  how  strongly  and 
inextricably  medieval  elements  had  entered 
into  the  warp  and  woof  of  their  life.  All  these 
things  are  reflected  in  the  art  of  the  time. 
Medieval  art  is  corporate  and  spontaneous. 
Renaissance  art  is  individual  and  self-con- 
scious. The  history  of  medieval  art  is  the 
history  of  local  styles  worked  out  by  groups 
of  men.  The  history  of  Renaissance  art  is 
the  history  of  individual  achievement  and 
rapidly  becomes  national. 

It  may  thus  be  seen  that  it  was  nat- 
ural, even  inevitable,  that  the  Italian  Re- 
naissance should  have  attempted  a  revival 
of  classic  architecture,  which  nevertheless 
was  qualified  by  medieval  inheritance 
and  modified  by  'the  new  needs  of  a  new 
time. 

The  architecture  of  the  Renaissance  has 
for  us  this  transcendent  interest,  that  it  is 
that  style  which  had  its  birth  in  the  gieat 
movement  out  of  which  grew  our  modern 
point  of  view,  our  modern  habits  of  thought, 
our  modern  life. 


E 


VIDENCES  OF  CLASSIC  FEEL- 
ING AND  TRADITION  IN  THE 
MEDIEVAL  ARCHITECTURE 
OF  ITALY.(i4) 


What  was  stated  in  the  first  lesson  with 
regard  to  Italy  in  general  is  especially  true 
of  the  center  of  Italy,  more  particularly  of 
Tuscany.  Lombardy  was  largely  northern 
both  in  civilization  and  architecture  until 
the  end  of  the  twelfth  century.  Indeed,  it 
was  here  that  one  of  the  most  influential  of 
northern  Romanesque  styles  originated. 
Venice  stands  so  much  apart  that  its  won- 
derful civilization  and  art  during  the  middle 
ages  hardly  partake  of  the  general  Italian 
movement,  while  the  south  of  Italy  is  largely 
dominated  by  Lombard,  Norman,  Byzantine 
and  Saracenic  influences. 

Under  these  conditions  we  should  naturally 
expect  to  find  in  Tuscany  stronger  evidences 
than  elsewhere  of  a  survival  of  classic  feel- 
ing during  the  middle  ages,  and  to  Tuscany 
also,  which  has  always  been  the  heart  of 
artistic  life  in  Italy,  we  should  naturally 
look  for  the  beginnings  of  the  Renaissance. 

In  order  to  appreciate  clearly  the  evi- 
dences of  classic  tradition  and  feeling  in 
medieval  Italian,  and  specifically  in  medi- 
eval Tuscan  architecture,  it  will  be  essential 
to  consider  some  of  the  more  salient  charac- 
teristics and  ideals  of  classic  architecture  on 
the  one  hand  and  of  the  more  consistently 
medieval  forms  of  northern  Europe  on  the 
other.  The  architecture  of  imperial  Rome 
sought  its  effects  largely  through  consciously 
studied  proportion,  and  in  the  pleasant  rela- 
tions of  openings  to  the  spaces  in  which  they 
were  set.  Its  real  construction  was  largely 
concealed,  and  the  design  depended  upon  an 
apparent  construction  of  columns  and  lintels 
whose  relation  to  the  real  construction  was 
often  slight.  It  loved  to  set  long  colonnades 
both  within  and  without  its  edifices.  And 
in  these  colonnades  it  loved  especially  the 
richness  of  the  Corinthian  order.  It  was 
fond  of  broad  surfaces  richly  decorated  with 
color  and  often  overlaid,  especially  in  the 
interior,  with  a  rich  veneering  of  marble 
slabs  arranged  in  panels  and  bands.  It 
delighted  in  vast  interiors  and  gave  an 
expression  of  spaciousness  to  its  great  halls 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


193 


such  as  no  other  architecture,  not  even  the 
Renaissance,  has  ever  surpassed  and  hardly 
ever  equaled.  The  buttresses  which  sup- 
ported its  huge  vaults  were  always  concealed 
so  that  the  breadth  of  the  quiet  wall  surfaces 
need  not  be  disturbed.  Its  arches  were  of 
simple  square  section,  slightly  molded  on  the 
face  only,  so  as  to  resemble  a  bowed  archi- 
trave. Until  the  last  days  of  the  empire 
these  arches  rested  on  piers  of  square  sec- 
tion, and  even  when  the  arch  was  brought 
down  upon  the  Corinthian  column  the  line  of 
the  arch  was  immediately  over  the  line  of 
the  shaft  as  it  was  of  the  pier.  In  other 
words,  the  arch  was  conceived  of  as  the  pier 
continued  upward  and  bent  over.  It  is 
especially  important  to  bear  in  mind  this 
conception.  We  shall  find  it  running  all 
through  Italian  architecture. 

On  the  other  hand  the  medieval  architec- 
ture of  the  north  of  Europe,  following  that 
of  Byzantium,  separated  the  arch  from  the 
column.  It  took  advantage  of  the  spread  of 
the  capital  (which  was  provided  with  a 
heavy  abacus,  or  bearing  block)  to  support 
a  wider  load,  so  that  the  line  of  the  arch  if 
continued  downward  would  fall  considerably 
outside  the  line  of  the  shaft.  Its  arches 
were  heavily  molded,  and  were  in  several 
rings,  or  arch  orders,  as  they  are  called, 
which  corresponded  with  the  orders  of  the 
supporting  grouped  pier.  The  colonnade 
(save  in  a  few  early  examples  in  Germany 
which  show  direct  Byzantine  influence) 
ceased  to  be  used.  The  buttresses  which 
supported  its  vaults  were  not  only  made 
visible,  but  became  important  elements  in 
the  effect  of  the  exterior.  As  Gothic  archi- 
tecture developed,  these  buttresses  increased 
in  size,  were  further  emphasized  by  pinna- 
cles, and  the  flying  buttress  was  added  to 
support  the  high  vaults  in  that  admirable 
system  of  balanced  thrusts  on  which  pure 
Gothic  construction  and  Gothic  design  de- 
pended. The  wall  surfaces  were  thus  cut  up 
into  vertical  compartments,  and  disappeared 
almost  entirely  as  the  traceried  windows 
increased  in  size.  The  pointed  vault  brought 
with  it  the  pointed  arch,  and  the  northern 
builders  so  reveled  in  the  pointed  arch  (so 
beautifully  harmonious  with  their  whole  con- 
ception) that  once  Gothic  architecture  was 


fully  developed  the  round  arch  was  not  used 
again  until  the  time  of  Renaissance  influ- 
ence. The  effect  of  the  Gothic  design 
depended  upon  its  thoroughly  organic  char- 
acter, on  the  fact  that  the  real  structure  was 
everywhere  revealed  and  the  design  seen  to 
be  its  inevitable,  logical  expression.  The 
height  rather  than  the  spaciousness  of  its 
interiors  was  emphasized,  and  its  whole 
expression  instead  of  being  quiet,  restrained 
and  determined  by  horizontal  lines,  was 


THE   BAPTISTERY   OF   FLORENCE. 

soaring  and  extatic  and  determined  by  ver- 
tical lines. 

Now,  in  Italy,  during  this  period,  the  love 
for  broad,  quiet  wall  spaces,  unbroken  by 
buttresses  is  always  apparent.  The  win- 
dows are  carefully  proportioned  to  these 
spaces.  The  colonnade  is  constantly  used. 
The  grouped  pier  and  the  arch  in  several 
orders  is  employed,  but  the  pier  is  continued 
into  the  arch,  the  moldings  of  the  two  being 
identical,  and  the  capital  of  the  pier  is  a 
mere  band  about  these  moldings  to  mark  the 
springing  of  the  arch.  The  fundamental  con- 


194 


ARCHITECTURE: 


ception,  in  other  words,  is  classic  Roman,  not 
medieval.     The  basilica  of  the  late  Roman 
empire  in  its  simplest  and  unchanged  form 
continued  in  use  in  Rome  down  almost  to 
the  Renaissance,  and  in  Tuscany  until  the 
incoming-  of  the    Gothic  fashion.     In  Tus- 
cany, especially  in  Florence,  the  forms  used 
so    closely   followed   classic   precedent   that 
German  writers  have  called  the  style  of  such 
churches  as  San  Miniato,  which  dates  from 
the  eleventh  century,  such  buildings  as  the 
Baptistery    at    Florence,    which    is    earlier, 
Proto-Renaissance.      Here    the   pure    classic 
architrave  and  cornices  of  classic  form  are 
used,     while    the     external     decoration    of 
incrusted  slabs  of  variegated  marble  is  an 
application  to  the   exterior   of   the    Roman 
method    of     interior     decoration.       In    the 
cathedral  and  baptistery  of  Pisa,  and  to  some 
extent  in  the  cathedrals  of  Lucca,  Prato  and 
Pistoja,  the  same  classic  elements  are  found 
intermingled    with   forms    that    show   more 
of     Lombard    or    of     Byzantine    influence. 
Finally,    though    this    is    due    directly     to 
Byzantine  influence,  the  dome  is  constantly 
employed,    while   we   never   find   it   in   the 
north.     Gothic  architecture  in  a  quite  pure 
form  was  introduced   into   Italy  by  monks 
from  Burgundy,  and  a  number  of  churches 
and  monasteries  were  built  which  were  strik- 
ingly similar  to  Burgundian  buildings.    This 
movement  interrupted  the   continuance    of 
the  classic  traditions.     But  the  Italian  work- 
men, who  endeavored  to  continue  this  Gothic 
fashion,  immediately  modified  it  to  suit  their 
more  classic  conception,  and  produced  such 
buildings  as  the  cathedrals  of  Siena,  Orvieto 
and  Florence,  in  which  Gothic  and  classic  ele- 
ments were  curiously  intermingled.     To  get 
greater  spaciousness   the   divisions    of    the 
interior  were  vastly  increased  in  size  and 
reduced  in  number.     To  obtain  the  broad 
wall  spaces  they  desired  for  color  decora- 
tions, the  size  of  the  windows  was  decreased, 
the  buttresses  were  suppressed,  and  the  vaults 
were  tied  together  with  iron  rods.  The  arches, 
to  be  sure,  now  rest  upon  piers  rather  than 
on  columns,  but  the  pier  usually  lacks  the 
organic  perfection  of  form  which  it  has  in 
the  north.     The  classic  relation  of  arch  and 
pier  is  still  found,  and  side  by  side  with  the 
pointed  arch  the  round  arch  is  placed.     The 


round  arch  is  used  more  and  more.  Mis- 
understood and  misapplied  Gothic  detail 
appears  side  by  side  with  detail  borrowed 
from  classic  architecture,  and  this  classic 
detail  is  imitated  more  and  more  as  time 
goes  on.  The  prevailing  lines  are  horizon- 
tal, not  vertical.  The  two.  systems  strug- 
gling for  mastery  often  produce  incongruities 
of  effect.  Thus  Gothic  pinnacles  are  used 
whose  prevailing  lines  nevertheless  are  hor- 
izontal rather  than  vertical.  The  Gothic 
tracery  especially  is  misunderstood,  and 
toward  the  close  of  the  fourteenth  century 
the  most  extravagant  and  meaningless  forms 
appear,  forms,  that  is,  having  no  relation  to 
the  structure,  no  significance  with  regard 
to  the  main  forms  which  they  accompany. 
In  the  civic  architecture  of  the  time  with 
their  broad  wall  surfaces,  carefully  spaced 
windows,  horizontal  lines  and  dominating 
cornice,  the  classic  conception  is  still  more 
apparent,  in  spite  of  the  semi-Gothic  detail. 
(The  cuts  on  pp.  99,  116,  153  illustrate  these 
points.) 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  in  Italy  the  Gothic 
style  was  misunderstood,  that  it  was  merely 
a  fashion  imported  from  without,  not  an  out- 
growth of  the  soil,  while  the  classic  forms 
and  classic  conceptions  to  which  the  Italians 
constantly  tended  to  revert,  were  natural  to 
them,  and  were  in  harmony  with  their  inborn 
genius. 

Under  these  circumstances,  when  they 
once  set  themselves  in  earnest  to  study 
the  remains  of  ancient  Roman  architec- 
ture, it  need  not  surprise  us  that  the  new 
manner  which  resulted  from  this  study  was 
seized  upon  with  avidity  and  spread  first  over 
Tuscany  and  then  throughout  the  rest  of 
Italy  with  astonishing  rapidity. 


T 


HE   EARLY    RENAISSANCE    IN 
TUSCANY:  BRUNELLESCHI.(iS) 


It  has  already  been  pointed  out 
that  the  history  of  Renaissance 
architecture  is  a  history  of  the  achievement 
of  individuals.  The  great  artist  to  whose 
activity  was  due  the  definite  beginnings  of 
Renaissance  architecture  was  Filippo  di  Ser 
Brunellesco,  or  Filippo  Brunelleschi  as  he  is 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


195 


CAMTANILE   AND   CATHEDRAL   OF   FLORENCE. 


usually  called.  He  was  born  in  Florence 
in  1377.  In  early  youth  he  was  apprenticed 
to  a  goldsmith,  an  art  in  which  so  many  of 
the  great  artists  of  the  Renaissance  re- 
ceived their  early  training.  In  these  days 
there  existed  no  narrow  education  for  a  par- 
ticular art;  but  nearly  every  artist  mastered 
to  a  greater  or  less  degree  all  the  graphic 
arts.  Sculpture  and  architecture,  as  was 
natural,  were  especially  closely  allied.  Flor- 
ence at  this  time  was  still  a  republic, 
dominated,  however,  by  the  great  family  of 
the  Albizzi,  who  on  the  whole  used  their 
influence  wisely.  In  1403  Brunelleschi  was 
defeated  by  his  great  contemporary,  Ghi- 
berti,  in  the  competition  for  the  great  bronze 
doors  of  the  Baptistery  of  Florence.  This 
disappointment,  with  the  impulse  of  the 
time,  seems  to  have  been  largely  instrumen- 
tal in  leading  him  to  go  to  Rome  in  company 
with  his  friend  the  young  sculptor  Donatello 
to  study  the  ancient  Roman  monuments. 
Their  work  was  the  first  systematic  study  of 
these  remains.  Brunelleschi  turned  his  atten- 
tion especially  to  the  architecture,  studying 
its  proportions,  its  construction  and  its 


detail.  He  seems  to  have  spent  the  greater 
part  of  his  time  in  Rome  in  this  way  until 
1417,  supporting  himself  by  his  work  as  a 
bronze  worker  and  jeweler.  During  this 
period  he  was  repeatedly  consulted  with  re- 
gard to  the  work  on  the  cathedral  of  Florence, 
especially  with  regard  to  the  drum  of  the 
dome  then  nearing  completion,  and  in  1418 
he  took  part  in  the  great  competition  for  the 
dome  itself,  which  resulted  finally,  in  1420, 
in  his  appointment,  together  with  his  rival 
Ghiberti  and  Batista  d'Antonio,  to  have 
charge  of  the  work.  The  design  in  its  main 
features  is  entirely  due  to  Brunelleschi.  A 
smaller  dome  of  somewhat  similar  outline 
formed  part  of  an  earlier  design  for  the 
cathedral,  as  may  be  seen  by  the  representa- 
tion of  it  in  one  of  the  frescoes  in  the  Span- 
ish chapel  in  the  cloisters  of  Santa  Maria 
Novella.  The  dome  of  the  ancient  baptistery 
opposite  the  cathedral,  although  concealed 
beneath  a  pyramidal  roof,  is  somewhat  sim- 
ilar in  constiuction;  while  small,  externally 
visible  domes,  due  to  Byzantine  influence, 
are  found  on  many  churches  of  Italy  in  pre- 
vious centuries.  But  a  dome  of  anything 


196 


ARCHITECTURE: 


like  this  size  had  not  been  built  in  Italy  since 
the  Pantheon  in  Rome,  and  a  great  exter- 
nally visible  dome  of  masonry  on  a  high 
drum  had  no  precedents  save  in  the  small 
domes  of  the  later  Byzantine  architecture. 
The  builders  of  the  cathedral  of  Florence 
had  been  somewhat  blindly  working  toward 
this  conception,  without  knowing  how  to 
carry  it  out  until  Brunelleschi  showed  them 
the  way.  Other  peculiarities  of  the  dome 
(which  is  really  an  octagonal  vault  and  not 
a  true  dome)  are  the  ribs  of  marble  which 
mark  its  angles  and  in  part  express  its  con- 
struction, and  especially  the  great  lantern,  as 
the  spire-like  structure  which  crowns  it  is 
technically  called.  This  was  not  designed 
by  Brunelleschi  until  the  last  years  of  his  life, 
and  it  was  not  completed  until  after  his 
death.  The  great  dome  of  Florence  is  the 
first  and  the  largest  Renaissance  dome,  and 
with  the  exception  of  the  dome  of  St.  Peters 
it  is  the  most  beautiful.  It  is  remarkable 
that  the  greatest  achievement  of  Renais- 
sance architecture,  the  lanterned  dome  on  a 
high  drum,  should  at  the  very  outset  have 
received  so  nearly  perfect  a  development. 
The  explanation  is,  as  we  have  seen,  to  be 
found  in  the  fact  that  the  medieval  builders 
of  Italy  had  been  feeling  their  way  toward 
this  outcome.  This  in  no  way  detracts  from 
the  marvel  of  Brunelleschi's  achievement. 
It  only  explains  how  such  an  achievement 
was  possible. 

Brunelleschi  designed  several  other  smaller 
true  domes  in  the  Pazzi  chapel  at  Santa 
Croce,  in  the  sacristy  of  San  Lorenzo,  and  at 
the  crossings  of  his  two  great  churches,  (see 
below)  in  the  position  in  which  we  some- 
times find  them  in  medieval  Italian  churches. 
(The  two  latter  were  carried  out  after  his 
death.)  These  domes  being  built  on  a 
square  plan  rest  on  pendentives  (the  spher- 
ical triangles  which  form  the  transition  from 
the  square  plan  of  the  supports  to  the  cir- 
cular plan  of  the  dome)  after  the  Byzantine 
manner,  but  the  detail  is  classic. 

Of  his  two  great  churches,  San  Lorenzo 
was  begun  in  1420  and  Santo  Spirito 
some  fifteen  or  twenty  years  later;  but 
neither  was  completed  until  after  his  death. 
In  plan  both  are  but  modifications  of  the 
medieval  Italian  monastic  churches,  but 


carried  out  on  a  careful  system  of  arith- 
metical proportion.  The  scheme  of  the 
naves  is  that  of  the  simple  Roman  basilica. 
The  treatment,  in  some  of  its  details,  recalls 
the  earlier  church  of  San  Miniato.  The 
arches  have  the  classic  Roman  form  and  rest 
on  columns,  not  on  piers,  the  columns  being 
of  the  Corinthian  order,  while  above  the 
arcade  a  classic  entablature  is  carried  all 
about  the  church.  The  aisles  have  domical 
vaults,  the  ceiling  of  the  nave  is  flat,  like 
that  of  the  Roman  basilica.  The  fagade  of 
neither  of  these  churches  was  ever  com- 
pleted. The  great  doorways  of  the  interior 
are  classic  in  general  form,  but  treated  in  a 
somewhat  novel  manner.  All  the  detail, 
though  imitated  from  classic  Roman  orig- 
inals, has  a  delicacy  which  reminds  one  of 
the  buildings  of  the  so-called  Proto-Renais- 
sance. 

In  the  porch  of  the  Pazzi  chapel,  begun 
about  1430,  there  are  four  columns  carrying 
entablatures  over  the  outer  bays  with  an 
arch  over  the  center  bay,  forming  a  motive 
often  spoken  of  as  the  Palladian  motive 
because  of  its  frequent  employment  by  Pal- 
ladio  and  the  architects  of  his  day.  This 
was  again  borrowed  or  suggested  by  a 
motive  which  was  used  in  the  declining1 
years  of  the  Roman  empire,  as  for  instance 
in  Diocletian's  palace  at  Spalato.  The  pi- 
lasters and  the  entablature  of  the  Pazzi  porch 
again  recall  the  treatment  of  the  Proto-Re- 
naissance  as  seen  in  the  Baptistery  and  in 
San  Miniato.  The  cherubs  in  the  frieze  are 
by  Brunelleschi's  friend  Donatello,  while  the 
evangelists  in  the  pendentives  of  the  inte- 
rior, the  seated  apostles  in  the  medallions 
over  the  windows  and  the  rich  decoration  of 
the  vault  of  the  porch  (the  central  compart- 
ment of  which  is  domed)  were  carried  out  in 
faience  by  Luca  del  la  Robbia.  The  exte- 
rior is  decorated  with  in  crusted  marble  like 
the  earlier  buildings  of  Florence;  but  with 
greater  reserve  in  the  use  of  color.  The 
motives  of  the  sacristy  of  San  Lorenzo  and 
of  the  Pazzi  chapel  appear  repeatedly  in  the 
work  of  Brunelleschi's  later  contemporaries. 

In  striking  contrast  with  this  delicate  work 
is  the  mighty  Pitti  Palace,  which  Brunel- 
leschi began  for  Luca  Pitti,  at  this  time  next 
to  Cosimo  Medici,  the  most  influential  man 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


197 


in  the  Florentine  state.  Here  there  is  but 
little  change  from  the  Florentine  fortress 
palaces  of  the  previous  century  save  in  the 
careful  ordering-  of  the  proportions,  in  the 
classic  detail  of  the  Ionic  balusters  and  in 
that  gaining  of  effect  by  mere  size  and  space 
which  was  characteristic  of  the  Renaissance 
as  it  had  been  of  ancient  Rome.  The  rough 
unhewn  blocks  (technically  called  rustica- 
tion) are  here  used  as  a  conscious  element  of 
effect.  Only  that  portion  including  the 
seven  central  arches  was  executed  by  Bru- 


open  and  hospitable  character  of  the  build- 
ing. Here  again  we  have  a  semi-classic 
arcade  but  of  wider  proportion  than  in  the 
churches,  while  over  the  center  of  each  arch 
there  is  in  the  second  story  a  rectangular 
window  enframed  with  a  classic  architrave 
and  crowned  by  a  classic  pediment.  The 
broad  overhanging  eaves  characteristic  of 
earlier  Florentine  buildings  crowns  it  at  the 
top,  while  the  end  bays  are  marked  by 
classic  pilasters.  The  motive  of  this  front  is 
used  repeatedly  after  this  in  early  Renais- 


THE   PITTI    PALACE    IN    FLORENCE. 


nelleschi.  The  use  of  arches,  as  in  the  lower 
story,  of  which  the  intrados  (inner  rim)  is 
semicircular  while  the  extrados  (outer  rim) 
is  pointed,  is  characteristic  of  the  early  Re- 
naissance, and  expresses  that  conflict  of 
Gothic  and  classic  which  determined  so  many 
of  its  forms. 

In  the  Ospedale  degl'Innocenti  (Hospital 
of  the  Innocents),  the  first  foundling  hospi- 
tal ever  erected  at  public  expense,  Brunel- 
leschi  uses  on  the  exterior  a  motive  hitherto 
confined  to  cloisters,  and  thus  expresses  the 


sance  designs.  (See  the  cut  p.  190.)  Slightly 
as  we  have  been  able  to  sketch  the  work  of 
Brunelleschi,  the  first  and  one  of  the  great- 
est of  Renaissance  architects,  our  limited 
space  obliges  us  to  generalize  with  regard 
to  the  work  of  his  contemporaries. 

Among  the  most  characteristic  buildings 
of  the  Early  Renaissance  in  Tuscany  are  the 
palaces.  They  differ  from  those  of  the  pre- 
vious period  mainly  in  the  carefully  grad- 
uated proportion  of  their  successive  stories, 
which  is  still  further  emphasized  by  gradu- 


198 


ARCHITECTURE : 


ation  in  masonry  (heavily  rusticated  below, 
less  so  in  the  middle  story,  and  smooth  in 
the  upper  story),  and  especially  in  the 
splendid  great  cornice  of  classic  character 
which  crowns  the  whole,  save  in  those  cases 
where  overhanging  wooden  eaves  are  em- 
ployed. It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  string 
courses  which  divide  the  stories  have  the 
same  proportion  to  the  stories  they  crown  as 
the  great  cornice  has  to  the  whole  height  of 
the  building.  The  windows  are  almost 
medieval  in  character,  save  for  the  detail  of 


THE    RICCARDI    PALACE,    FLORENCE, 

the  colonettes  that  crown  them.  These  pal- 
aces are  built  about  square  central  courts 
having  classic  arcades  similar  to  those 
already  described  in  the  interiors  of  the 
churches  and  on  the  front  of  the  Ospedalc 
degl'Innocenti.  One  of  the  nobler  of  these 
palaces  is  that  known  as  the  Riccardi,  which 
was  built  (between  1446  and  1451)  by  Bru- 
nelleschi's  great  contemporary,  flichelozzo, 
(1396  to  1472)  for  Cosimo  Medici,  but  which 
was  altered  and  enlarged  in  the  seventeenth 
century. 


Another  noble  palace  of  similar  general 
design  is  the  Strozzi  Palace  in  Florence, 
begun  in  1489  by  Benedetto  da  flajano 
(1442-1497)  and  completed  by  Cronaca  (1454- 
1509)  toward  the  close  of  the  century.  Some 
of  these  palaces  are  somewhat  lighter  in 
treatment,  and  have  their  upper  stories  fin- 
ished in  stucco  sometimes  decorated  with 
sgraffit:>  (brown  or  black  color  over  white 
plaster),  while  the  top  story  occasionally  has 
an  open  loggia.  The  palaces  of  Siena  at  this 
time  are  still  more  medieval  in  character. 

Much  of  the  detail  of  this  period  is  very 
fine  in  scale  and  extremely  delicate  in  execu- 
tion. The  pulpits,  paneling,  church  furni- 
ture of  wood  and  of  marble,  and  the  tomb 
monuments  are  generally  lavishly  decorated 
with  sculpture,  and  of  very  rich  design. 
The  niches  in  which  the  tombs  are  set  are 
often  crowned  with  semi-circular  or  seg- 
mental  pediments,  such  as  are  also  found  on 
the  doorways,  and  the  pilasters  that  en- 
frame them  are  richly  carved  with  delicate 
arabesques  suggested  by  classic  originals  but 
treated  with  a  wealth  of  quaint  fancy  and  a 
tender  refinement  of  execution  which  is 
peculiar  to  the  period. 

Donatello,  Desiderio  da  Settignano,  Bene- 
detto de  flajano,  Bernardo  and  Antonio 
Rosselino  are  among  the  most  important 
sculptor-architects  who  are  noted  for  this 
work. 


T 


HE  SECOND  PERIOD  OF  THE 
EARLY  RENAISSANCE  IN 
TUSCANY:  A  L  B  E  R  T  I.  THE 
EARLY  RENAISSANCE  IN 
LOMBARD  Y.(i6) 


The  first  architects  of  the  Renaissance, 
Biunelleschi,  Michelozzo  and  the  rest,  were 
essentially  craftsmen.  They  carried  out  as 
builders  their  own  designs  just  as  the  medi- 
eval mastercraftsmen  had  done.  This  gave 
a  vital  quality  to  their  executed  work  such  as 
we  do  not  find  in  the  work  of  the  later  Re- 
naissance, It  gave  them  an  appreciation  of 
the  connection  between  structure  and  design 
such  as  we  fail  to  find  among  the  later  men 
in  whom  the  dilettante  and  literary  point  of 
view  was  more  strongly  developed.  As  the 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


199 


Renaissance  goes  forward  we  find  the  prog- 
ress of  its  architecture  determined  as  much 
by  what  is  written  about  it  as  by  what  is 
built. 

It  is  curious,  therefore,  to  find  so  nearly 
at  the  beginning  of  the  movement  a  man 
whose  whole  career  exemplifies  this  tend- 
ency, who  indeed  did  much  to  bend  it  into 
this  direction  and  whose  life  and  work  in  so 
many  respects  anticipated  what  was  to  fol- 
low. Many  excellent  craftsmen  of  the  old 
kind  followed  one  another  in  long  succession 
after  this  time;  but  there  were  few  of  them 
who  were  not  affected  by  this  new  point  of 
view — the  point  of  view  of  the  theorist  and 
literateur  rather  than  of  the  craftsman  and 
builder.  Leon  Battista  Albert!  might  indeed 
almost  be  called  the  first  architect  in  the 
modern  sense,  as  contrasted  with  the  crafts- 
men, the  artist  masterbuilders  of  the  olden 
time.  He  was  a  Florentine  of  wealthy  and 
influential  family,  but  was  born  in  exile  in 
Genoa  in  1404,  and  did  not  return  to  Flor- 
ence until  1434  on  the  return  of  Cosimo 
Medici  and  the  fall  of  the  powerful  Albizzi 
family,  who  for  so  long  had  controlled  the 
destinies  of  the  republic.  On  his  return  the 
wonderful  revival  of  the  arts  which  he  found 
there,  especially  the  work  of  Brunelleschi, 
made  a  most  powerful  impression  upon  this 
learned  scholar  steeped  in  the  love  of  classic 
antiquity,  upon  this  priest  more  influenced 
by  paganism  than  by  Christian  learning, 
upon  this  Florentine  returning  for  the  first 
time  to  his  native  land  to  find  it  so  far  in 
advance  of  the  rest  of  Italy  and  of  the  world. 
All  this  he  fully  states  in  the  remarkable 
dedication  to  Brunelleschi  of  his  "Treatise  on 
Painting"  in  1436.  Doubtless  the  impres- 
sion then  made  upon  him  must  have  influ- 
enced him  to  the  study  of  the  architecture  of 
antiquity  during  his  repeated  sojourns  in 
Rome  from  1436  to  1451.  In  1447  he  was 
made  canon  of  the  cathedral  of  Florence  and 
priest  of  the  quarter  of  San  Lorenzo.  Later 
he  became  rector  of  San  Martino  in  Ganga- 
landi,  and  abbot  of  San  Severino  in  Pisa. 
But,  as  was  the  case  with  many  of  the 
learned  priests  of  this  time,  he  seldom  per- 
formed the  duties  of  these  offices,  but  held 
the  revenues  and  left  the  duties  to  less  dis- 
tinguished subordinates.  Most  of  his  time 


was  devoted  to  writing  books  on  art  and  on 
philosophy,  to  physical  studies  and  to  the 
practice  of  architecture.  Among  other 
things  he  invented  the  camera  obscura. 

His  first  important  work  of  architecture 
was  the  remodeling  of  the  church  of  San 
Francisco  at  Rimini  forSig.  Malatesta  (1447). 
The  front,  even  in  its  unfinished  condition, 
is  a  most  interesting  adaptation  of  the 
motive  of  the  Roman  triumphal  aich  to  the 
treatment  of  a  church  fagade.  It  is  indeed 
the  first  church  fagade  of  the  Renaissance. 
In  1451  he  designed  for  Ludovico  Gonzaga 
of  Mantua,  general  of  the  republic  of  Flor- 
ence, the  choir  of  the  church  of  S.  S. 
Annunziata.  From  here  he  went  to  Rome 
to  advise  with  Rosselino  as  to  the  rebuilding 
of  the  church  of  St.  Peter  and  additions  to 
the  Vatican.  With  regard  to  St.  Peters 
nothing  was  dune,  and  but  little  remains  of 
his  work  on  the  Vatican.  In  1452  he  dedi- 
cated to  the  pope  his  book  on  architecture ' '  De 
Re  JEdificatore, "  in  which  he  propounded 
his  theories  of  proportion.  This  is  the  first 
of  that  long  series  of  works  on  the  theory  of 
architectural  design  which  were  to  have  so 
strong  an  influence  on  the  further  develop- 
ment of  the  Renaissance  style.  From  1458 
to  1464,  under  Pius  II.,  he  served  as  papal 
secretary.  In  1459  he  designed  the  first 
Renaissance  church  on  the  Greek  cross  plan, 
a  scheme  which  was  afterward  to  be  so  gen- 
erally adopted.  This  church,  the  church  of 
St.  Sebastian  at  Mantua,  is  now  ruined. 

Between  1460  and  1466  there  was  built  from 
his  designs  in  Florence  the  Rucellai  Palace, 
in  which  another  step  in  the  development  of 
the  Renaissance  palace  was  taken.  Hitherto 
there  was  110  featuie  in  the  design  of  the 
palace  fagade  which  was  not  required  by  the 
construction.  The  design  consisted  in  the 
careful  shaping  and  ordering  of  necessary 
features.  But  the  front  of  the  Rucellai  Pal- 
ace is  enlivened  by  a  system  of  structurally 
unnecessary  flat  pilasters  carrying  light 
classic  entablatures  which  take  the  place  of 
the  string-courses  separating  the  stories.  At 
the  same  time  the  great  cornice  is  made  less 
heavy.  It  is  significant  that  this  step  was 
taken  not  by  a  craftsman  but  by  a  scholar 
and  a  theorist.  It  is  indicative  of  the  new 
view  which  regarded  architectural  design  as 


2OO 


ARCHITECTURE: 


THE   RUCLLLAI    PALACE,    FLORENCE. 


a  means  of  effect  apart  from  its  connection 
with  structure,  or  rather  which  was  content 
to  substitute  an  ideal  for  the  real  structure 
as  a  basis  of  design.  It  will  be  noted,  how- 
ever, that  the  pilasters  and  entablatures  are 
so  lightly  treated  as  to  avoid  the  suggestion 
that  they  are  a  part  of  the  real  structure; 
they  are  frankly  treated  as  merely  decorative 
features,  and  the  classic  proportions  of  the 
entablatures  are  modified  so  that  they  are 
hardly  more  than  the  string-courses  which 
the  occasion  demands,  while  the  main  cor- 
nice still  dominates  'the  whole  design.  The 
windows,  it  will  be  seen,  still  recall  those  of 
medieval  times.  In  1470  he  completed  (also 
for  Giovanni  di  Paolo  Rucellai,  for  whom 
the  palace  had  been  designed)  the  front  of 
the  church  of  Santa  Maria  Novella,  which 
had  been  commenced  in  Gothic  style.  Here 
enlarged  consoles  of  classic  form  for  the  first 
time  took  the  place  of  the  half  gables  at  the 
end  of  the  aisles.  This  motive  also  became  a 
constant  one  in  Renaissance  architecture 
from  now  on.  But  it  was  in  the  church  of  San 
Andrea  at  Mantua,  which  in  1472,  the  year 
of  his  death,  he  designed  for  Ludovico  Gon- 
zaga,  that  he  established  the  type  of  the 
Renaissance  church  front,  again  using  the 
Roman  triumphal  arch  as  the  basis  of  his 
design. 

But  none  of  these  numerous  works 
of  architecture  did  he  carry  out  himself. 
This  he  regarded  as  beneath  the  dignity  of 


the  designer.  He  employed 
as  his  executants  chiefly  An- 
tonio Manetti  and  Bernardo 
Rosselino.  Thus  for  the  first 
time  are  architect  and  builder 
separated.  This  marks  one  of 
the  great  changes  which  differ- 
entiates modern  from  medieval 
architecture.  Bernardo  Ros- 
selino died  before  Alberti  him- 
self, but  he  executed  many 
independent  works,  in  which, 
however,  the  influence  of  Al- 
berti is  strikingly  apparent, 
especially  in  the  Palazzo  Pic- 
colomini  at  Pienza,  one  of  a 
series  of  buildings  —  palace, 
church  and  town  hall — which 
he  carried  out  for  Pius  II.  at 
the  pope's  native  town.  Subject  to  the  same 
influences  but  somewhat  more  robustly  han- 
dled is  the  work  of  Luciano  Laurana  (born 
in  1420  at  Vrana  in  Dalmatia)  as  may  be 
seen  especially  in  the  courtyards  of  the  pal- 
aces at  Urbino  and  at  Gubbio  (1468-1482). 
A  distinct  step  forward  was  taken  here  in 
the  stronger  treatment  of  the  angle  of  the 
court.  (Compare,  for  instance,  the  angle  of 
the  court  at  Gubbio  with  that  of  the  Strozzi 
palace  at  Florence.)  In  church  architecture 
a  somewhat  similar  forward  step  was  taken 
by  Simone  del  Pallajuolo,  called  Cronaca 
(1454-1509),  in  the  interior  of  his  church  San 
Francesco  al  Monte,  on  the  hill  of  San 
Miniato,  near  Florence.  Here  the  aisle  is 
treated  as  an  arcade  in  the  Roman  order 
with  Doric  pilasters,  while  the  windows 
above  are  rectangular  with  classic  enframe- 
ment  and  pediments.  This  shows  a  much 
closer  imitation  of  the  classic  Roman  work. 
It  is  more  robust  in  handling  than  the 
earlier  work,  and  it  is  one  of  the  first  in- 
stances of  the  use  of  Doric  order.  It  already 
approaches  the  high  Renaissance. 

While  this  astonishing  development  had 
been  going  forward  in  Tuscany,  Renaissance 
work  was  introduced  into  Lombardy,  where, 
however,  the  Gothic  style,  which  was  there 
much  more  consistent,  lingered  much  longer. 
Tuscany  was  a  country  where  stone  was  the 
natural  building  material.  The  flat  plain  of 
Lombardy,  on  the  other  hand,  had  no  stone. 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


2OI 


Its  natural  building  material  was  brick, 
though  incrusted  marble  was  often  used, 
either  in  connection  with  the  brick,  or  cover- 
ing its  surface  entirely.  In  Venice  the  same 
was  true,  but  there  marble  was  even  more 
lavishly  used,  brought  from  over  seas.  The 
Renaissance  architecture  was  imported  into 
Venice  even  later  than  into  Lombardy :  but 
the  Renaissance  styles  of  the  two  regions 
were  much  more  closely  akin  than  their 
previous  medieval  styles  had  been.  As 
showing  the  persistence  of  the  Gothic  man- 
ner in  Venice  and  Lombardy  it  will  be 
enough  to  state  that  the  late  Gothic  gateway 
of  the  ducal  palace  in  Venice,  the  Porta  della 
Carta,  was  built  between  1440  and  1443,  after 
the  Riccardi  Palace  had  been  begun  by 
Michelozzo  and  the  Pitti  Palace  by  Brunel- 
leschi.  The  choir  of  the  church  of  San  Zac- 
caria  in  Venice  was  begun  in  Gothic  style  in 
1457  (see  the  cut  p.  153),  while  in  Milan  the 
nave  of  the  church  of  Santa  Maria  delle 
Grazie  was  built  in  the  Gothic  style  about 
1470,  some  years  after  Renaissance  architec- 
ture had  been  introduced  there. 

Lombard  and  Venetian  architecture  of  the 
Renaissance  is  characterized  by  its  love  of 
highly  wrought  detail  which  is  always  of 
great  delicacy  and  beauty.  The  richness 
and  variety  of  its  changes  in  the  general 
scheme  of  the  Corinthian  capital  and  the 
beauty  and  delicacy  of  its  arabesques  is  even 
more  striking  than  in  Tuscany,  while  its  em- 
ployment of  these  details  is  much  more  lav- 
ish. On  the  other  hand  it  is  frequently 
careless  in  its  general  composition.  Its 
artists  were  carvers  and  sculptors,  but 
showed  little  structural  knowledge  or  feel- 
ing. The  front  of  the  church  of  Santa 
Maria  dei  Miracoli  at  Bresica  and  the  church 
of  the  same  name  at  Venice  may  be  taken  as 
examples  of  this.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Loggia  del  Consiglio  at  Verona  (1476),  by 
Fra  Qiocondo  (1435-1515),  who  is  also  known 
as  the  first  to  edit  and  publish  the  book  of 
the  Roman  writer  on  architecture,  Vitruvius, 
may  be  taken  as  an  example  of  what  is  best 
in  Lombard  architecture.  The  motive,  as 
will  be  seen,  is  similar  to  that  of  Brunel- 
leschi's  Ospedale  degl'Innocenti ;  but  the 
front  is  divided  by  pilasters,  the  windows 
are  much  more  elaborate,  and  the  color 


richer.  It  is  characteristic  of  this  Lombard 
work  that  the  pilasters  have  lozenge-shaped 
or  circular  panels  in  the  center,  and  that 
there  is  a  string-course  at  the  floor  level,  and 
another  at  the  window-sill  level,  the  two 
with  the  space  between  them  recalling  in  a 
measure  the  forms  of  the  classic  entablature, 
though  not  its  proportions.  The  use  of 
statues  above  the  cornice  is  also  to  be  noted. 
The  most  celebrated  and  the  richest  of  the 
works  of  the  early  Renaissance  in  Lombardy 
is  the  front  of  the  Certosa  (Carthusian 
monastery),  near  Pavia.  This  was  begun 
in  1491.  It  is  overloaded  with  rich  carving, 
hardly  a  surface  remaining  plain. 

The  palace  fronts  in  Venice  at  this  time 
are  of  great  charm.  Their  motives  are 
those  of  the  earlier  Venetian  palaces,  but 
with  the  round  arches  and  Corinthianesqne 
columns  of  the  Renaissance.  They  are  lav- 
ishly decorated  with  colored  marbles  in 
friezes  and  circular  grouped  panels.  We 
have  not  space  to  trace  their  interesting  de- 
velopment. 


T 


HE  LATER  RENAISSANCE  IN 
ITALY:  BRAMANTE,  RAFAEL, 
PERUZZI,  THE  SANGALLI, 
SANMICHELI,  SANSOVINO.  (17) 


The  constant  tendency  of  the  Renaissance 
as  it  developed  was  toward  a  closer  imitation 
of  classic  Roman  detail,  although  the  plan 
and  arrangement  of  the  buildings,  and  in 
some  cases  the  motives,  were  founded  on 
medieval  precedent  modified  by  the  wants 
of  the  time. 

The  next  important  steps  in  this  develop- 
ment were  taken  by  the  great  Bramante  and 
his  immediate  pupils.  Although  the  work  of 
the  first  half  of  his  career  is  still  of  early 
Renaissance  character,  his  name  is  asso- 
ciated with  the  period  of  the  fully  developed 
Renaissance  (or,  as  it  has  been  conveniently 
termed  by  German  writers,  "the  High  Re- 
naissance"), just  as  that  of  Brunelleschi  is 
with  the  Early  Renaissance. 

Donato  Bramante  was  born  at  Urbino  in 
1444.  He  was  trained  as  a  painter,  and 
seems  also  to  have  worked  with  Luciano 
Laurana  on  the  ducal  palace  at  Urbino.  By 


2O3 


ARCH  I  TEC  TURE: 


about  1470  we  hear  of  him  in  Milan,  where 
he  built  in  a  vigorous  Early  Renaissance 
style,  which  shows  the  influence  of  Laur- 
ana,  and  lavishly  decorated  after  the  Lom- 
bard manner  the  little  octagonal  sacristy 
and  church  of  Santa  Maria  presso  San 
Satiro.  In  this  he  followed  the  modification 
of  medieval  Lombard  octagonal  towers 
suggested  by  Michelozzo  (who  was,  perhaps, 
the  first  to  introduce  the  Renaissance  style 
into  Lombard y)  in  his  chapel  of  St.  Peter 
Martyr  at  San  Eustorgio  in  Milan.  This 
motive  of  the  octagonal  dome  or  cloister 
vault  treated  exteriorly  with  a  pyramidal 
roof  and  built  of  brick,  Bramante  used  fre- 
quently in  Lombardy,  the  most  noticeable 
instance  being  the  church  of  Santa  Maria 


THE    CANCELLERIA    PALACE    IN    ROME. 

delle  Grazie  at  Milan,  the  choir  of  which 
Bramante  began  in  1492  for  Ludovico  il 
Moio,  Duke  of  Milan,  whose  court  architect 
Bramante  had  been  since  1479,  when  Ludo- 
vico seized  the  reins  of  power.  This  build- 
ing is  one  of  the  finest  examples  of  Lombard 
Renaissance  architecture  in  brick,  and  shows 
how  admirably  the  Renaissance  architects 
could  modify  their  forms  to  a  different 
material.  The  projections  are  slight,  the 
cornices  making  up  in  height  what  they  lack 
in  projection,  and  the  design  depends  on  the 
rich  treatment  of  a  multiplicity  of  small 
parts,  the  units  employed  being  determined 
by  the  size  of  the  individual  brick.  Here  is 
no  attempt  to  imitate  in  brick,  designs  proper 
to  stone.  The  same  character  is  shown  in 


the  designs  of  the  brick  palaces  and  churches 
at  Bologna  and  at  Siena  at  the  same  period. 
The  result  of  Bramante's  influence  in  Lom- 
•bardy  was  to  give  its  buildings  more  of 
structural  character  and  consistency,  as  is 
seen  by  the  designs  executed  by  his  pupils 
and  others  influenced  by  him.  Such  are  the 
domed  churches  of  Santa  Maria  Incoronata 
at  Lodi,  and  La  Croce  in  Riva,  the  beautiful 
basilican  church  of  the  Monastero  Maggiore 
at  Milan,  and  .the  cathedral  at  Como,  where 
Bramante  himself  carried  out  some  work. 

On  the  overthrow  of  Ludovico  il  Moro  by 
the  invasion  of  King  Louis  XII.  of  France, 
the  brilliant  court  of  Milan  was  scattered, 
and  Bramante  went  to  Rome,  probably  by 
way  of  Florence.  He  was  evidently  strongly 
influenced  by  the  great  works  of  Renais- 
sance architecture  which  he  found  here. 
Beside  the  buildings  we  have  noted  in  Flor- 
ence itself,  he  may  have  seen  in  its  partly 
completed  state  the  domed  church  of  the 
Madonna  del  Calcinajo  at  Cortona,  which 
was  begun  in  1485  by  Francesco  di  Giorgio, 
an  able  architect  of  Siena.  Its  dome,  how- 
ever, was  not  completed  until  1514. 

In  Rome  a  change  at  once  manifested  it- 
self in  the  character  of  Bramante's  work. 
The  great  Cancelleria  Palace,  which  he  com- 
pleted, if  he  did  not  begin,  carries  still  far- 
ther the  development  of  palace  design  from 
the  point  where  it  was  left  by  Alberti  and 
Laurana.  Each  story  of  the  exterior  is 
decorated  by  flat  pilasters,  as  in  the  designs 
of  those  masters,  but  the  pilasters  are  now 
grouped  into  alternately  wide  and  narrow 
spacings,  in  what  is  well  called  by  German 
writers  'the  rhythmical  bay',  a  motive  which 
from  now  on  Bramante  constantly  em- 
ployed. The  windows  are  placed  in  the 
wider  bays,  are  of  a  new  form  almost 
peculiar  to  Bramante  (semicircular-headed 
windows  with  square  enframement  and  slight 
cornice  over  the  arch),  and  are  carefully 
contrasted  in  size  in  the  several  stories. 
The  design  has  thus  much  more  variety  than 
those  of  an  earlier  date.  Each  story  has  a 
slight  entablature,  as  in  the  Rucellai  Palace. 
The  great  court  has  arches  resting  on  Doric 
columns  instead  of  the  Corinthian  or  Corin- 
thianesque  order  hitherto  employed.  The 
palace  is  one  of  the  most  splendid  and  one 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


205 


of  the  most  beautiful  of  the  Renaissance. 
Another  court  of  great  beauty  and  some- 
what different  motive  is  that  of  the  monas- 
tery of  Santa  Maria  della  Pace.  Perhaps 
the  building  which  is  most  characteristic  of 
Bramante's  second  manner  is  the  Tempietto 
(or  little  Temple)  in  the  cloister  of  San 
Pietro  in  Montorio  in  Rome.  Save  for  its 
prominent  dome  and  its  characteristically 
Renaissance  balustrade  (a  feature  invented 
by  the  Renaissance  architects  without  classic 
precedent),  this  design,  with  its  Doric  colon- 
nade of  thoroughly  classic  proportion,  is 
almost  a  reproduction  of  the  Roman  circular 
temple.  It  marks  the  change  to  the  pre- 
cise following  of  Roman  detail. 

At  this  period  the  court  of  the  popes, 
which  had  become  the  most  prominent  in 
Italy,  attracted  all  the  best  artists,  and  from 
this  time  on  Rome  rather  than  Florence  was 
the  center  of  the  artistic  and  intellectual  life 
of  the  peninsula.  Bramante  was  employed 
by  the  great  pope  Julius  II.,  in  important 
additions  to  the  Vatican  Palace  and  in  mak- 
ing designs  for  the  rebuilding  of  St.  Peter's. 
In  the  great  court  of  the  Vatican,  Bramante 
gave  evidence  in  a  marked  degree  of  that 
feeling  for  spaciousness,  of  the  effectiveness 
of  mere  size  which  is  so  characteristic  of  the 
Renaissance.  In  the  buildings  that  flank 
the  court  Bramante  employed  again  the 
rhythmical  bay:  but  this  time  in  conjunction 
with  the  Roman  arch  order.  The  court  was 
originally  in  three  different  levels,  the  con- 
nections with  which  were  made  by  broad 
flights  of  balustraded  steps,  perhaps  the 
earliest  instance  of  that  employment  of 
monumental  stairways  which  became  so 
characteristic  a  feature  of  the  Renaissance 
gardens.  At  the  upper  end  of  the  court  was 
a  colossal  niche  several  stories  high.  This 
motive  had  already  been  employed  by 
Bramante  on  a  smaller  scale  at  the  church 
of  Abbiate  Grasso,.near  Milan.  The  court 
of  the  Vatican  is  now  cut  into  three  parts  by 
buildings,  so  that  the  original  effectiveness 
of  the  design  is  lost.  In  his  drawings  for 
St.  Peter's  Bramante  completed  the  develop- 
ment of  the  dome  treatment  by  making  the 
plan  on  which  the  dome  rested  that  of  a 
square  with  truncated  angles,  thus  greatly 
strengthening,  both  in  fact  and  in  appearance, 


the  piers,  and  causing  the  pendentives  to 
take  the  form  of  a  spherical  trapezoid  in- 
stead of  a  spherical  triangle.  (See  cut,  p.  203.) 
The  high  drum  was  also  further  developed 
and  enriched  by  an  external  colonnade. 
Very  little  of  this  was  carried  out,  how- 
ever, by  Bramante,  and  it  remained  for 
Michelangelo  to  give  to  the  dome-forms, 
which  Bramante  had  suggested,  their  fullness 
of  beauty.  Of  domed  churches  which  show 
more  or  less  directly  the  result  of  Bramante's 
influence  may  be  mentioned  Santa  Maria 
della  Consolazione  at  Todi  (1508),  perhaps 
the  work  of  Bramante  himself,  and  the 
admirable  San  Biagio  at  Montepulciano 
built  in  1518  (three  years  after  Bramante's 
death)  by  Antonio  da  Sangallo  the  elder. 

Among  those  who  assisted  Bramante  in 
his  drawings  for  St.  Peter's  were  his  nephew 
the  painter,  Rafael  Sanzio  (1483-1520),  Bal- 
dassare  Peruzzi  (1481-1536),  Antonio  da 
Sangallo  the  younger  (d.  1546),  Michele 
Sanmicheli  (1484-1559),  and  Jacopo  San- 
sovino  (1477-1570).  Under  these  great  men 
the  architecture  of  the  Renaissance  was  car- 
ried to  its  greatest  perfection,  especially  in 
palace  design.  They  seemed  to  feel  that  the 
pilasters  with  which  Alberti  and  Bramante 
had  sought  to  enrich  their  palace  fronts  were 
superfluous  and  illogical.  They  therefore  re- 
turned to  the  simple  scheme  of  the  Early 
Renaissance  palace  of  Tuscany,  that  is  to  say, 
a  simple  massive  fagade,  its  stories  divided  by 
string-courses,  pierced  with  windows  and 
crowned  by  a  great  cornice.  Rustication, 
however,  if  it  existed  at  all,  was  generally  con- 
fined to  the  angles,  and  was  always  treated 
with  more  delicacy  than  in  the  earlier  style, 
while  the  windows  no  longer  recalled  the 
middle  ages,  but  were  rectangular  openings 
with  classic  enframements,  sometimes  with 
columns,  and  often  with  alternately  trian- 
gular and  segmental  pediments.  The  string- 
courses were  now  neither  medieval  in  char- 
acter nor  treated  like  small  entablatures, 
but  rather  like  molded  plinths  preparing  for 
the  story  above,  and  designed  expressly  for 
the  function  they  had  to  perform  in  the  de- 
sign. The  details  were  all  of  strictly  classic 
Roman  character,  much  more  robust  than 
those  of  the  Early  Renaissance,  and  gener- 
ally with  less  decoration.  The  lavish  use  of 


2O6 


ARCHITECTURE: 


fanciful  sculptured  ornament  now  disap- 
pears, as  does  also  the  decorative  use  of  col- 
ored marbles  on  the  exterior,  but,  in  the 
interior,  decorations  in  fresco  become  even 
more  elaborate  and  fanciful,  as  for  instance, 
in  Rafael's  Loggie  in  one  of  the  smaller 
courts  of  the  Vatican  built  by  Bramante.  In 
general  the  whole  treatment  as  compared 
with  the  earlier  period  is  more  formal, 
more  correct  in  its  imitation  of  Roman 
detail  and  wonderfully  refined  in  propor- 
tion. In  the  courts  the  Roman  arch  order 
was  generally  employed,  imitated  from  such 
buildings  as  the  Colosseum.  Among  the 


THE   FARNESE    PALACE    IN    ROME. 


most  beautiful  of  these  buildings  are  the 
Villa  Farnesina  in  Rome  (about  1510), 
by  Peruzzi  and  Rafael,  containing  some 
of  Rafael's  famous  frescoes,  the  Palazzo 
Pandolfini  in  Florence,  designed  by  Rafael 
(1520),  the  ^reat  Farnese  Palace  in  Rome, 
begun  in  1534  by  Antonio  Sangallo  the 
younger  for  Alexander  Farnese,  after- 
ward Pope  Paul  III.,  and  completed  by 
Michelangelo  and  Giacomo  della  Porta, 
and  the  Massimi  palaces  by  Peruzzi,  perhaps 
the  most  refined  of  all  these  designers. 
Peruzzi  also  executed  work  at  Siena  and  at 
Bologna,  while  some  very  refined  buildings 


were  constructed  in  Florence,  especially  by 
Baccio  d'Agnolo  (1462-1543). 

In     1516    Rafael    designed    for    Cardinal 
Giulio  de'  Medici  (afterward  Pope  Clement 
VII.),  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and  most 
characteristic  of   the    country  villas  of   the 
Renaissance,  the  Villa  Madama,  near  Rome. 
Its  courts,  halls  and  loggie,  its  gardens  with 
their  balustraded  terraces  and  great  flights 
of  steps,    even   in   their   present  unfinished 
and  ruinous  condition,  form  one  of  the  most 
attractive   compositions  of  this  great  time. 
Rafael's  Capella  Chigi  in  Santa  Maria  del 
Popolo  (1512)  shows  the  application  of  Bra- 
mante's    dome    motive 
to  a  chapel  of  compar- 
atively small  size. 

This  somewhat  form- 
al manner  was  carried 
to  Venice  and  Verona 
by  Sanmicheli  (1484- 
1559)  and  Sansovino 
(1477-1570).  Here,  how- 
ever, the  style  was 
treated  less  logically 
and  often  with  less  fine 
proportions,  but  with 
greater  richness.  In 
the  Venetian  palaces 
the  treatment  was  mod- 
ified by  the  necessity  of 
conforming  to  the  Vene- 
tian type  of  palace  with 
its  balconies  and  great 
groups  of  windows. 
The  most  splendid  of 
these  compositions  is 
undoubtedly  Sansovi- 

no's  Library  of  St.  Mark  (1536).  Here  the 
Roman  arch-order  is  used  in  two  stories 
crowned  by  a  very  broad  frieze  and  enriched 
by  a  lavish  use  of  figure  sculpture.  Here  Fra 
Giocondo's  motive  of  statues  crowning  the 
building  is  repeated.  In  its  origin  this  mo- 
tive is  Lombard  and  Venetian.  The  main 
scheme  of  the  design  will  be  seen  by  close 
analysis  to  be  an  enriched  variation  of  the  cen- 
tral motive  of  the  Villa  Farnesina.  Apart 
from  his  palaces  Sanmicheli  is  to  be  remem- 
bered for  his  fortifications  and  city  gateways 
in  which  he  employs  rustication  and  a  rusti- 
cated Doric  order  to  gain  vigor  of  effect. 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


THE    VITRU- 
VIANS    AND 
MICHELAN- 
GELO.     PAL- 
LADIO.      THE 
DECLINE  IN  ITALY. 
(18) 

Shortly  after  Rafael's 
death  in  1520  two  dis- 
tinct and  conflicting 
movements  are  discern- 
ible in  Italian  architec- 
ture, to  some  extent  in- 
fluencing the  work  of 
some  of  the  men  already 
named. 

On  the  one  hand  we 
have  the  architectural 
activity  of  Michelan- 
gelo Buonarroti  (1475- 

1564),  which  is  in  the  nature  of  a  protest 
against  the  somewhat  formal  work  of  his 
time.  Michelangelo  refused  to  be  bound  by 
rule  and  precedent,  and  insisted  on  treating 
the  classic  detail  with  a  freedom  which 
often  ran  into  license  and  disregarded  en- 
tirely the  structural  significance  of  the  forms 
employed.  His  aim  was  to  produce  effect- 
ive compositions  in  vigorous  light  and 
shade,  and  he  cared  very  little  by  what 
means  this  was  obtained.  It  thus  happens 
that  his  compositions  are  always  bold  and 
vigorous,  but  frequently  coarse  and  mean- 
ingless in  detail. 

Michelangelo's  early  career  was  that  of  a 
painter  and  sculptor,  partly  in  Florence  and 
partly  in  Rome,  and  he  hardly  turned  his 
attention  to  architecture  until  after  the 
troubled  events  which  led  to  the  final  over- 
throw of  the  Republic  of  Florence  and  its 
enslavement  by  the  Medici,  when  he  was 
fifty-five  years  old.  From  that  time  on  he 
was  mainly  in  Rome;  but  his  first  important 
works  of  architecture  were  the  New  Sacristy 
of  San  Lorenzo  with  the  tombs  of  the  Medici, 
and  the  Laurentian  Library  in  Florence.  In 
both  these  works  the  tendency  spoken  of  is 
clearly  shown.  Columns  which  carry  noth- 
ing but  are  recessed  in  the  wall,  fantastic 
capitals  of  no  particular  order,  broken  pedi- 
ments, brackets  which  have  nothing  to  sup- 


THE    NEW    SACRISTY    IN    THE    CHURCH    OF    SAN    LORENZO,    FLORENCE. 


port,  but  are  used  simply  for  the  shadow 
they  cast — these  and  other  like  features 
anticipate  the  decline  of  later  years,  which 
the  example  of  Michelangelo  did  so  much  to 
bring  about.  In  1536  the  great  buildings  on 
the  Capitoline  hill  in  Rome  were  begun  from 
his  designs,  and  here  we  find  the  first  em- 
ployment of  the  colossal  order,  i.  e.,  the 
order  embracing  two  or  more  stories  and 
generally  applied  to  the  wall  simply  as  dec- 
oration. 

In  1546,  when  he  was  already  seventy-one 
years  old,  he  was  appointed  architect  of  St. 
Peter's  in  Rome,  and  here  he  showed  his 
really  marvelous  capacity  and  power  as  an  ar- 
chitect. He  carried  out  Bramante's  general 
idea  of  a  church  on  a  Greek  cross  plan  sur- 
mounted by  a  dome ;  but  he  treated  the  ex- 
terior of  the  building  with  a  single  colossal 
pilaster  order  with  an  attic,  increased  the 
height  of  the  dome,  and  entirely  changed  the 
design  of  the  drum.  Instead  of  Bramante's 
encircling  colonnade,  he  used  a  series  of  but- 
tresses marked  by  coupled  columns.  These 
were  intended  to  be  surmounted  by  scrolls  and 
statues,  which  were  never  carried  out.  The 
main  ribs  of  the  dome  itself  rose  from  these 
buttresses.  In  the  treatment  of  the  detail 
of  the  dome  we  find  almost  nothing  of  the 
extravagance  of  form  of  his  other  work ;  but 
in  the  attic  of  the  church  this  indifference  to 


208 


ARCHITECTURE: 


propriety  of  form  is  clearly  apparent.  The 
great  dome  of  St.  Peters  marks  the  culmi- 
nation of  dome  development.  The  effective- 
ness and  beauty  of  the  whole  church  was 
much  marred  by  the  lengthening  of  the 
nave  carried  out  by  Maderna  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  which  changed  the  form  of 
the  plan  to  that  of  a  Latin  cross.  To  get 
any  idea  of  the  design  of  the  exterior  as 
Michelangelo  intended  it,  one  must  look  at 


ST.  PETER'S  CATHEDRAL  IN  ROME. 

the  church  toward  the  transept  or  the  choir. 
The  depravity  of  which  Michelangelo  was 
capable  in  his  last  years  is  shown  in  the 
Porta  Pia,  a  design  not  surpassed  in  ugliness 
or  absurdity  by  any  work  of  the  decline. 
About  Michelangelo  were  grouped  a  number 
of  followers  and  admirers  whose  work,  how- 
ever, while  marred  by  many  of  his  faults, 
was  usually  less  extravagant.  Of  these  men 
three  are  important.  The  painter,  Giorgio 
Vasari  (1511-1514),  is  more  especially  known 


as  the  author  of  the  "Lives  of  the  Painters." 
His  work  in  architecture  is  chiefly  in   Flor- 
ence, and   is  characterized  by  a  picturesque- 
ness  of   handling,    a   scenic    charm,    hardly 
found  among  his  contemporaries.      His  best 
work  is  the  Uffizzi  (or  Offices)  in   Florence, 
1560,  now  used  as  an  art  gallery — one  of  the 
most  celebrated  of  the  world.      A  man  of 
somewhat  similar  pictnresqueness  of  feeling 
is  Bartolommeo  Ammanati  (1511-1592),  who 
completed  the  Pitti  Pal- 
ace.      Giacomo    del  la 
Porta    (1541-1604)    car- 
ried to  completion  sev- 
eral of    Michelangelo's 
unfinished  buildings, 
notably  St.    Peters,  the 
garden  front  of  the 
Farnese    Palace,    the 
Collegia  della  Sapienza, 
and  the  Porta  Pia,  be- 
sides   executing   build- 
ings  himself   of    which 
the  most  notable  is  the 
church  of  S.  Maria  dei 
Monti,    a  characteristic 
example  of  the  period. 
As    against    the     in- 
fluence of  Michelangelo 
we    have    the    work   of 
the    formalists.     The 
men  who  could  not  de- 
sign   a    detail    without 
seeking     direct     prece- 
dent for  it  in  the  Roman 
remains  or  in  the  trea- 
tise of  Vitruvius  which 
now    was    made  almost 
an   architectural    bible. 
These  men,  and  the 
learned    but    pedantic 

amateurs  who  encouraged  them,  sought  to 
reduce  everything  to  rule,  and  published 
books  laying  down  fixed  forms  for  each  one 
of  the  orders,  which  now  were  reduced  to  a 
rigid  system  for  which  the  work  of  ancient 
Rome  really  furnished  no  precedent.  The 
detail  of  these  men  tended  to  become  cold 
and  mechanical,  and  was  lacking  altogether 
in  that  vitality  which  is  such  a  charm  in  the 
work  of  the  fifteenth  century.  Decoration 
was  now  reduced  to  a  minimum.  Sham 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


209 


material,  stucco  masquerading  as  stone  or 
marble  now  begins  to  appear,  while  the 
scale  of  the  buildings  is  increased.  Chief 
among  the  earlier  men  of  this  school  was  Gia- 
como  Barozzi  da  Vignola  (1507-1573),  whose 
chief  works  are  the  Villa  of  Pope  Julius  III 
(1550-1555),  (in  which  he  was  probably  as- 
sisted by  Vasari),  the  church  of  the  Madonna 
degli  Angeli  at  Assisi,  the  church  of  II  Gesii 
in  Rome,  and  the  castle  at  Caprarola.  But 
he  is  best  known  for  his  treatise  on  the  five 
orders  which  since  his  day  has  been  the 
standard  authority  in  the  schools,  and  which 
perhaps  more  than  any  other  influence  has 
tended  to  give  to  modern  architectural  design 
its  mechanical  quality.  Sebastiano  Serlio  of 
Bologna,  a  pupil  of  Peruzzi's,  published  a 
treatise  on  architecture  which  also  had  a 
wide  influence. 

In  part  belonging  to  this  formal  school,  but 
showing  a  vigor  in  conception  which  places 
him  rather  apart,  is  Andrea  Palladio  of 
Vicenza  (1518-1580).  Of  his  numerous  build- 
ings at  Vicenzathe  best  known  and  the  most 
beautiful  is  the  so-called  Basilica(begun  about 
1549),  in  which  he  treats  the  two  stories  each 
with  a  continuous  arcade  with  columns, 
Doric  below,  Ionic  above,  in  what  has  since 
been  called  the  Palladian  motive.  He  is  fond 
also  of  using  the  same  motive  in  his  windows. 
The  idea  of  the  fa§ade  was  evidently  sug- 
gested by  Sansovino's  Library  of  St.  Mark 
at  Venice,  completed  a  few  years  previously. 
But  Palladio's  building  is  treated  with  a 
dignity  and  simplicity  and  a  picturesqueness 
of  handling  which  produce  a  very  different 
effect.  Palladio  follows  Michelangelo  in 
applying  the  colossal  order  to  his  palace 
fronts,  often  with  great  dignity  of  effect  but 
with  little  logic.  He  was  largely  employed 
also  in  Venice,  and  the  two  great  churches, 
S.  Giorgio  Maggiore  (begun  1560)  and  the 
Redentore  (1576)  are  by  him.  It  will  be 
noted  that  the  fronts  of  these  churches  em- 
ploy the  motive  established  by  Albert!  in  S. 
Andrea  at  Mantua,  but  with  the  robustness 
of  detail  and  the  closer  following  of  Roman 
precedent  characteristic  of  the  later  time. 
The  tower  of  San  Giorgio  is  a  characteristic 
and  beautiful  Italian  Renaissance  bell-tower 
or  campanile.  Palladio's  villas  between  Ven- 
ice and  Vicenza  are  often  of  great  charm, 


but  are  much  more  formal  than  those  of 
the  previous  period  about  Rome.  Vincenzo 
Scamozzi  (1552-1616)  closely  followed  in 
Palladio's  footsteps. 

Quite  distinctive  are  the  villas  of  Genoa 
at  this  time:  formal  buildings,  generally 
with  the  colossal  order,  and  with  much 
extravagance  of  detail;  but  in  which  the 
use  of  the  staircase  is  made  a  principal 
feature  of  the  interior,  as  hitherto  it  had 
been  of  the  garden  terraces.  The  variety 
and  picturesqueness  of  these  Genoese  stair- 
cases and  staircase  halls  is  quite  remarkable, 
and  not  less  so  the  formal  treatment  of  the 
gardens  about  the  houses,  with  their  ter- 
races, balustrades,  flights  of  steps,  cascades 
and  fountains.  Chief  among  the  architects 
of  Genoa  at  this  time  is  Galeazzo  Alessi 
(1512-1572)  to  be  remembered  not  only  for 
his  palaces,  but  also  as  architect  of  the 
church  of  Madonna  del  Carignano,  in  which 
the  general  idea  of  St.  Peters  is  followed  on 
a  smaller  scale. 

From  this  time  on  the  extravagance  and 
falsity  of  design  increased.  Renaissance 
architecture  passed  over  into  what  is  known 
as  the  Baroque.  Nearly  all  connection  be- 
tween structure  and  design  now  disappeared, 
and  theatrical  splendor  of  effect  was  the 
ideal  aimed  at.  The  colossal  order  was  all 
but  universal,  and  we  find  the  most  capri- 
cious use  of  detail,  simply  to  obtain  effects  of 
light  and  shade.  Rigid  lines  were  avoided 
where  possible.  Broken  pediments,  curved 
fagades,  twisted  shafts,  windows  of  weird 
shape,  moldings  and  capitals  bent  as  if  made 
of  some  soft  material,  ornamentation  of  ex- 
travagant scroll  and  shell  work,  curtains 
executed  in  stone  in  imitation  of  cloth — 
these  and  other  debased  forms  everywhere 
appear  and  affect  especially  the  treatment 
of  the  interiors.  On  the  other  hand  build- 
ings of  a  more  dignified  character  are  not 
wanting,  and  there  is  often  a  largeness  of 
handling  which  gives  great  dignity,  as  in  the 
great  colonnade  in  front  of  St.  Peter's  in 
Rome  by  Giovanni  Lorenzo  Bernini  (1599- 
1680),  the  most  celebrated  architect  of  this 
time.  Garden  design  now  reaches  its  highest 
development.  Carlo  Maderna  (1556-1639), 
who  lengthened  the  nave  and  built  the  large 
front  of  St.  Peter's,  and  Francesco  Bor- 


210 


ARCHITECTURE: 


romini  (1599-1667)  are  others  whose  names 
are  associated  with  these  extravagances.  In 
Venice  is  to  be  found  perhaps  the  most 
splendidly  effective  composition  of  this 
period,  the  picturesque  and  finely  grouped 
church  of  Santa  Maria  della  Salute  (1631) 
by  Longhena,  who  also  built  there  two  great 
palaces,  the  palaces  Pesaro  and  Rezzonico, 
which  in  spite  of  some  ugliness  of  detail  are 
as  fine  in  composition  as  any  of  an  earlier 
period. 

Burckhardt  thus  briefly  sums  up  Renais- 
sance architecture  in  Italy:  "We  can  distin- 
guish two  periods  of  the  Renaissance  properly 
so  called.  The  first  extends  from  about  1420 
to  1500,  and  may  be  characterized  as  the 
period  of  experiment.  The  second  perhaps 
scarcely  reaches  the  year  1540;  it  is  the 
golden  age  of  modern  architecture,  which 
in  the  greatest  problems  attains  to  a  definite 
harmony  between  the  main  forms  and  the 
decoration,  which  is  restrained  within  due 
limits.  From  1540  on  begin  already  the 
first  foretokens  of  the  Baroque  style  which 
insists  solely  on  masses  and  proportions  and 
treats  the  detail  arbitrarily  as  an  external 
sham-organism." 


R 


ENAISSANCE  ARCHITECTURE 
IN  FRANCE.  (19) 


Renaissance  architecture  was  in- 
troduced into  France  as  a  result 
of  the  invasions  of  Italy  by  the  successive 
French  kings,  Charles  VIII.,  Louis  XII., 
and  Francis  I.  During  the  middle  ages  the 
Gothic  style  had  its  origin  and  reached  its 
highest  development  in  the  provinces  of 
northern  France;  and  as  the  monarchy 
strengthened  and  welded  the  provinces  into 
a  nation  under  its  central  government,  the 
Gothic  style  tended  to  become  more  and 
more  national  until  in  the  years  of  its  decline 
it  varied  but  little  in  different  parts  of  the 
country  from  Calais  to  the  Mediterranean. 
It  was  a  style  which  had  been  developed  by 
the  people,  and  it  perfectly  expressed  their 
noblest  ideals  and  aspirations. 

When  the  nobles  of  the  French  armies, 
impressed  by  the  luxury  and  splendor  of 
Italian  life  and  civilization,  wished  to  intro- 


duce the  Renaissance  style  into  France,  they 
met  at  first  with  strenuous  opposition  from 
the  people,  and  from  the  Gothic  craftsmen 
wedded  to  their  beautiful  traditional  native 
art.  During  the  reigns  of  Charles  VIII. 
and  Louis  XII.,  in  spite  of  the  constant  im- 
portation of  Italian  works  of  art  and  of 
Italian  artists  into  France,  the  late  French 
Gothic  style  was  scarcely  affected. 

The  first  building  in  which  Renaissance 
forms  appear  to  any  marked  degree  is  the 
Chateau  Gaillon  near  Rouen,  built  for  himself 
by  Louis  XII. 's  minister  Georges  d'Amboise 
the  cardinal  archbishop  of  Rouen.  But  the 
main  structure  is  still  that  of  a  great  late 
Gothic  castle  overlaid  with  detail  imitated 
from  the  Italian  Renaissance.  The  chateau 
was  wantonly  destroyed  in  1796,  but  one  of 
its  beautiful  entrances  is  set  up  in  the  court- 
yard of  the  school  of  Fine  Arts  in  Paris.  It 
was  a  characteristic  sign  of  the  times  that 
while  the  great  ecclesiastic  might  employ 
the  new  foreign  forms  in  building  a  palace 
for  himself,  yet  in  erecting  the  gorgeous 
front  of  the  cathedral  at  Rouen  (1509-1530), 
in  the  church  of  St.  Maclou,  and  in  the  Pal- 
ace of  Justice  in  the  same  town,  he  used  the 
beautiful  if  somewhat  florid  and  extravagant 
late  Gothic  style.  The  people  built  their 
town  halls  at  this  time  by  preference  in 
Gothic,  as  at  Noyon,  Compiegne,  Douai  and 
Dreux;  and  the  great  tower  of  the  cathedral 
of  Beauvais,  over  three  hundred  feet  high 
was  built  between  1555  and  1568,  and  the 
transepts  were  completed  in  Gothic  style 
after  the  fall  of  the  tower  in  1573,  a  quarter 
of  a  century  after  the  Early  Renaissance 
style  of  'France  had  already  run  its  course. 
The  wing  of  the  castle  of  Blois  built  by 
King  Louis  himself  is  also  Gothic,  though 
Renaissance  detail  creeps  in  inconspicuously 
in  a  few  places.  It  is  not  until  the  reign  of 
Francis  I.  (1515-1547)  that  the  new  manner 
— essentially  a  style  of  palaces,  as  the  Gothic 
had  been  essentially  a  style  of  churches — 
was  fully  established.  Francis  I.  built  en- 
tirely, or  added  to,  a  number  of  royal  pal- 
aces: at  Chambord  (begun  about  1526),  at 
Blois,  at  Fontainebleau,  at  St.  Germain-en- 
Laye;  and  the  nobles  followed  suit  in  all 
parts  of  France  in  a  series  of  chateaux  of 
marvelous  picturesqueness  and  beauty.  The 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


plans  were  still  those  of  the  Gothic  castles, 
regular  if  the  site  was  flat  and  extended,  as 
at  Chambord,  but  often  following  the  irregu- 
larities of  some  rocky  height,  as  at  St.  Ger- 
main-en-Laye.  They  consisted  of  a  great 
central  donjon  or  keep,  with  enclosing  wings 
forming  a  large  court  or  courts.  The 
angles  were  usually  marked  by  large  round 
towers,  as  in  the  medieval  castles,  and  the 
buildings  were  crowned  with  steep  roofs, 
with  lofty  and  richly  ornamented  chimneys. 
But  now  these  round  towers  were  pierced 
with  large  window  openings  placed  one  over 
the  other.  In  some  instances  medieval 
castles  were  altered  into  Renaissance  pal- 
aces by  cutting  the  walls  and  inserting  large 


besques  of  friezes  and  pilasters,  which  are 
hardly  behind  the  earlier  Lombard  work  in 
delicacy,  while  they  have  even  greater 
variety  of  treatment  and  a  vigor  of  concep- 
tion and  handling  that  distinguishes  them 
from  the  Early  Renaissance  style  of  Italy 
which  they  imitated.  It  is  noteworthy  that 
these  men  followed  the  Early  Renaissance 
style  which  was  nearer  in  spirit  to  their  own 
Gothic,  and  net  the  formal  classicism  which 
already  had  reached  in  Italy  its  highest 
point  of  development.  The  grafting  of  the 
forms  of  the  Early  Renaissance  upon  Gothic 
motives  gives  to  the  Early  Renaissance  style 
of  France,  usually  spoken  of  as  the  style  of 
Francis  I.,  a  quite  peculiar  charm.  It  is  not 


THE    CHATKAU    OF    ST.     GERMAIN-EN-LAYE,     NEAR    PARIS. 


windows.  The  vertical  line  of  windows  was 
generally  crowned  by  lofty  dormers.  The 
windows  had  stone  mullions,  as  in  the 
previous  late  Gothic  style:  but  they  were 
enframed  by  Renaissance  pilasters.  The 
whole  wall  surface  indeed  was  divided  into 
panels  by  Renaissance  pilasters  and  hori- 
zontal string-courses,  somewhat  after  the 
Lombard  manner.  The  Lombard  Renais- 
sance influence  is  clearly  dominant,  as  was 
natural,  for  it  was  in  Lombardy  chiefly  that 
the  armies  of  Louis  XII.  and  Francis  I.  had 
operated,  and  mainly  Lombard  artists  who 
were  imported  into  France.  The  Gothic 
craftsmen  soon  began  to  take  kindly  to  the 
new  forms  of  detail,  and  their  exuberant 
fancy  expends  itself  in  capitals  and  ara- 


without  its  appropriateness  that  the  succes- 
sive Renaissance  styles  of  France  are  usually 
called  by  the  names  of  the  monarchs  tinder 
whom  they  flourished.  It  was  from  the 
court  that  the  impulse  mainly  came  which 
led  both  to  their  first  introduction  and  their 
subsequent  development. 

But  the  buildings  of  the  time  of  Francis  I. 
were  still  the  work  of  craftsmen,  working  in 
association  though  with  perfect  individual 
freedom,  in  the  old  medieval  way.  It  is  this 
fact  which  explains  the  vitality  and  the 
charm  of  the  work  of  this  time.  It  is  still 
Gothic  in  spirit.  Pierre  Fain,  Roulland 
Leroux,  Guillaume  Delorme,  Pierre  Val- 
ence, Colin  Biart,  and  the  rest,  who  worked 
on  the  Chateau  Gaillon.  Pierre  Nepveu, 


212 


ARCHITECTURE: 


THE    PALACE    OF    THE    TUILERIES,    PARIS. 


" master  of  the  works  of  masonry"  at  the 
castle  of  Chambord,  Pierre  Gardier,  master 
builder  of  the  Chateau  Madrid,  were  not 
architects  in  any  modern  sense. 

In  the  subsequent  reigns  from  Henry  II. 
to  Henry  III. — the  reigns  of  the  last  Valois 
kings  (1547-15:89) — a  different  spirit  begins 
to  show  itself.  The  buildings  of  this  time 
erected  under  the  influence  of  the  court  are 
generally  the  work  of  individual  architects. 
The  principal  men  of  this  time  are  Pierre 
Lescot  (1510-1578),  a  man  of  noble  birth, 
architect  of  the  oldest  portion  of  the  Louvre ; 
Philibert  de  I'Orme  (1515-1570),  who  built 
the  Chateau  d'Anet  for  Diane  de  Poitiers, 
and  began  the  palace  of  the  Tuileries  for 
Catherine  de'  Medici;  and  Jean  Bullant 
(1515-1578),  De  1'Orme's  successor  on  the 
Tuileries  and  architect  of  a  number  of  im- 
portant palaces.  All  these  men  had  studied 
in  Italy,  and  carried  back  with  them  into 
France  something  of  the  formality,  coldness 
and  close  following  of  classic  detail  of  the 
late  Italian  Renaissance.  De  I'Orme  boasts 
that  he  had  "carried  into  France  the  method 
of  building  well,  removed  barbarous  meth- 
ods, and  great  faults,  and  shown  to  all  how 
one  ought  to  observe  the  measures  of  archi- 
tecture," i.  e.,  the  fixed  formulae  of  the  five 
orders.  The  charm  and  richness  and  vitality 
of  the  Early  Renaissance  detail  now  disap- 
pear. The  detail  becomes  coarser,  though 
the  sculptured  decoration  of  such  men  as 
Jean  Goujon  (1510-1562)  has  much  grace  and 


beauty,  especially  in  individual  figures  fre- 
quently shown  in  very  low  relief.  The  type 
of  the  French  Renaissance  palace  motive 
now  reaches  its  most  consistent  develop- 
ment. The  amelioration  of  manners  leads 
to  greater  openness  in  the  treatment  of 
fronts.  The  circular  towers  of  the  medieval 
castles  develop  into  square  projecting  pavil- 
ions, with  high  roof  and  flat  tops,  as  in  the 
Louvre.  Such  roofs  have  since  been  known 
as  Mansard  roofs,  from  a  later  architect  who 
employed  them.  The  court  facade  consists 
usually  of  a  lower  arcaded  story  in  the 
Roman  order,  sometimes  with  coupled  pilas- 
ters or  columns,  or  with  the  rhythmical  bay 
(as  in  Bramante's  court  of  the  Vatican) ;  of 
a  second  story  with  large  mullioned  win- 
dows, one  over  each  arch  below,  separated 
by  pilasters  placed  over  the  columns  or 
pilasters  of  the  first  story,  the  whole  often 
surmounted  by  an  attic.  It  will  be  seen  that 
while  the  forms  are  mainly  those  of  the 
later  Italian  Renaissance,  the  treatment  of 
them  and  the  main  motives  are  still  thor- 
oughly French,  and  are  developments  from 
the  earlier  castle  modified  by  Italian  influ- 
ences. 

Under  Henry  IV.  the  tendency  toward 
coarser  and  more  extravagant  detail  in- 
creased. The  country  was  impoverished  by 
the  civil  wars,  and  this  leads  in  many  of  the 
buildings  to  a  simplicity  of  treatment  often 
very  dignified.  Brick  and  stone  are  often 
used  together  in  a  very  effective  way  and  in 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


213 


a  way  distinctly  French,  which  can  be 
traced  back  to  late  Gothic  times.  The  style 
of  Louis  XIII.  is  similar  in  general  char- 
acter, but  more  grandiose  and  lavishly  deco- 
rated, especially  in  the  interior.  The 
exterior  became  still  more  formal.  The 
skyline  is  less  picturesque.  The  dormers, 
which  had  been  growing  less  prominent, 
now  disappeared.  The  colossal  order  and 
the  Renaissance  dome  make  their  first  ap- 
pearance in  France.  Salomon  de  Brosse 
designed  for  the  Queen  Mother,  Marie  de' 
Medici,  the  Luxembourg  Palace,  which  ap- 
plied to  the  pavilioned  French  chateau  the 
rustication  of  Florentine  buildings  such  as 
the  Pitti  Palace.  Jacques  Lemercier  (1585- 
1660)  continued  the  work  on  the  Louvre, 
hardly  changing  Lescot's  motive;  began  a 
palace  for  Cardinal  Richelieu  afterward 
known  as  the  Palais  Royal,  and  in  1635 
designed  the  church  of  the  Sorbonne,  one  of 
the  first  instances  in  France  of  the  use  of  the 
Renaissance  dome. 

Under  Louis  XIV.  (1643-1715)  the  ex- 
teriors became  still  more  Roman,  still  more 
formal  in  manner.  The  steep,  lofty  roofs 
and  picturesque  skylines  of  the  earlier 
periods  now  disappear,  and  are  replaced  by 
the  low  roof  with  balustraded  parapet  and 
the  classic  pediment.  The  colossal  order 
everywhere  reigned,  and  grandiose  magni- 
ficence became  the  chief  aim.  During  the 


whole  history  of  the  Renaissance  in  France 
the  increasing  degree  of  public  security  led 
to  greater  openness  in  the  treatment  of  the 
dwellings,  and  at  this  period  the  fortress-pal- 
ace of  earlier  days  ceased  to  built  and  the 
palaces  were  made  more  open  than  ever, 
as  in  the  great  palace  at  Versailles  begun  in 
1661  by  Louis  Levau  (1612-1670),  where 
long  ranges  of  windows  on  the  ground 
story  open  directly  onto  the  terrace.  The 
gardens  of  Versailles  are  the  most  mag- 
nificent example  of  garden  architecture  of 
this  time.  They  were  the  work  of  the 
famous  Le  N6tre.  The  palace  of  Versailles 
was  continued  after  Levau's  death  by  Jules 
Hardouin  Mansard  (1645-1708),  (nephew  of 
Francois  Mansard,  whose  name  was  given 
to  the  Mansard  roof),  architect  also,  among 
many  other  buildings,  of  the  dome  of  the 
church  of  the  Invalides,  which  was  begun  in 
1670  by  Liberal  Bruant.  But  perhaps  the 
most  characteristic  work  of  the  reign  of 
Louis  XIV.  was  the  great  front  of  the 
Louvre,  a  great  colonnade  of  colossal  coupled 
Corinthian  columns  over  a  basement  story, 
the  work  of  an  amateur,  a  physician,  Claude 
Perrault. 

This  formal  and  grandiose  architecture  of 
the  reign  of  Louis  XIV.  spread  over  all 
Europe.  Architecture  had  almost  become 
European  rather  than  national.  The  found- 
ing of  the  School  of  Fine  Arts  at  Paris,  in 


THE    NEW    LOUVRE,    IN    PARIS.        (THE    PART    DESIGNED    BY    LESCOT,    NOT    THAT    BY    PERRAULT.) 


214 


ARCHITECTURE: 


1646,  by  Louis  XIV.,  tended  to  fix  this  as 
the  modern  style.  In  the  subsequent  reigns 
of  Louis  XV.  (1715-1774),  and  Louis  XVI. 
(1774-1793),  the  same  formal  manner  was 
continued  in  the  exteriors,  as  in  the  front  of 
the  church  of  St.  Sulpice  (1755),  by  Ser- 
vandoni  [the  towers  are  later] ;  the  church 
of  Ste.  Genevieve,  generally  known  as  the 
Pantheon  (1757),  by  Jacques  Germain  Souf- 
flot  (1714-1781);  the  Ministere  de  la  Marine 
and  the  Garde  Meuble  (1772),  by  Jacques 
Ange  Gabriel  (1710-1782),  which  flank  the 
Rue  Royale  on  the  Place  de  la  Concorde: 


THE    RATHHAUS   (CITY    HALL),    COLOGNE. 


and  the  Odeon  Theater  (1789).  In  the  in- 
teriors, however,  extravagant  and  debased 
forms,  scroll  work  of  fantastic  shape,  and  the 
curious  decoration  known  as  rocaille  "rock- 
work," —  whence  the  term  Rococo  —  were 
introduced,  chiefly  under  the  influence  of  an 
architect  named  Oppenard,  who  had  studied 
in  Italy  under  the  high  priest  of  bad  taste, 
Borromini.  These  forms  are  sometimes 
handled  with  a  certain  delicacy,  and  are 
executed  in  plaster  or  wood,  and  much 
decorated  with  gilding.  Plaster  decorations 
in  execrable  taste  are  at  this  time  introduced. 


especially  into  the  churches.  Splendid 
screens  of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
centuries  were  removed,  and  many  of  the 
great  medieval  cathedrals  and  churches 
suffered  irreparably.  But,  on  the  whole,  in 
France  at  this  time,  in  spite  cf  grandiose 
formality  on  the  one  hand  and  debased  and 
meaningless  detail  and  decoration  on  the 
other,  the  general  level  of  taste  did  not  fall 
as  low  as  in  Italy  or  Spain. 


R 


ENAISSANCE  ARCHITECTURE 
IN  GERMANY,  THE  NETHER- 
LANDS AND  SPAIN.  (20) 


The  Renaissance  style  was  intro- 
duced into  Germany  about  the  same  time 
that  it  came  into  France,  but  by  different 
channels.  The  soldiery  of  the  emperors 
Maximilian  and  Charles  V.  took  part  indeed 
in  the  wars  in  Italy,  which  at  this  time  was 
the  veritable  battleground  of  Europe,  but 
their  incursions  had  less  influence  on  the 
arts  of  Germany  than  the  commercial  con- 
nection between  the  two  countries  which 
had  existed  since  the  middle  ages.  Italian 
works  of  art,  especially  of  the  minor  crafts, 
were  imported,  and  affected  the  work  of 
German  craftsmen,  and  German  artists 
traveled  in  Italy.  It  was  thus  in  the  handi- 
crafts of  Germany,  in  the  backgrounds  of 
paintings,  in  armour,  utensils  and  the  minor 
works  of  architecture  and  sculpture,  that 
the  new  forms  first  made  their  appearance 
and  the  peculiar  German  craft  character  was 
afterwards  impressed  upon  the  architecture, 
when  that  also  came  to  be  affected  by  the 
new  movement.  The  condition  of  Germany 
at  this  time  was  in  marked  contrast  to 
France,  and  this  condition  is  reflected  in  the 
architecture.  France  had  been  welded, 
especially  by  Louis  XL,  into  a  nation  under 
the  control  of  the  king.  When,  therefore, 
under  his  successors  the  Renaissance  style 
came  in,  it  affected  the  whole  country,  and 
underwent  a  national  development.  In 
Germany  there  was  but  little  national  cohe- 
sion or  national  sentiment.  The  various 
electorates,  dukedoms,  and  free  cities  were 
but  loosely  connected  by  the  empire.  Each 
followed  its  own  more  or  less  independent 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


2I5 


course.  This  lack  of  cohesion  was  still  fur- 
ther increased  by  the  Reformation,  which 
divided  the  country  by  religious  differences, 
and  these  qualified  the  whole  development 
of  the  Renaissance.  Absorbed  by  state 
affairs,  the  nobles  gave  much  less  attention 
to  the  arts  than  they  did  in  France,  and 
architecture  was  left  in  the  hands  of  the 
craftsmen  who  had  introduced  the  new 
forms.  The  Renaissance  style  in  Germany 
on  these  accounts  lacked  consistent  develop- 
ment. Its  growth  was  popular  and  local, 
not  a  matter  of  concern  to  the  nobles  of  the 
nation  as  in  France,  or  one  of  universal 
interest  as  in  Italy.  The  German  workmen 
were  strongly  attached  to  their  late  medieval 
art,  and  were  imbued  with  medieval  senti- 
ment; and  we  find  that  the  forms  of  the 
Italian  style  were  not  adopted  without  modi- 
fication, due  partly  to  ignorance,  partly  to 
the  medieval  ideals  of  the  German  craftsmen. 
The  main  lines  of  the  buildings  of  the 
Renaissance  in  Italy  are  horizontal.  In 
France,  in  spite  of  the  steep  roofs  and  pic- 
turesque sky  lines,  a  balance  is  preserved 
between  vertical  and  horizontal;  but  in 
Germany  the  vertical  movement  distinctly 
predominates.  It  is  also  characteristic  of 
the  German  Renaissance  as  distinguished 
from  that  of  France  that  the  town  halls  and 
the  houses  of  the  burghers  are  more  impor- 
tant than  the  palaces  of  the  nobles  in  the 
development  of  the  style.  The  German 
craftsmen  seized  not  only  upon  the  forms  of 
the  orders,  on  the  classic  columns  and  pilas- 
ters, which  were  nearly  always  incorrect  in 
proportion  and  clumsy  in  detail,  but  used 
the  elements  of  the  later  Italian  Baroque 
detail,  treating  them  all  in  their  own  way  to 
produce  a  quaint  and  fantastic  picturesque- 
ness  which  often  is  attractive,  even  when 
the  forms  themselves  are  coarse  and  even 
vulgar.  The  high  gable,  which  in  the 
French  style  is  seldom  used,  appears  every- 
where. The  fronts  are  often  cut  up  into 
panels  by  pilasters  and  string-courses,  as  in 
France;  but  nearly  always  the  vertical 
pilaster  lines  are  kept  stronger,  while  the 
horizontal  strings  are  subordinate.  These 
vertical  pilaster  lines  are  carried  up  into  the 
gables,  and  the  string-courses  thus  produce 
great  steps  in  the  gables,  which  are  filled  in 


HEIDELBERG    CASTLE:    WING    OF    FREDERICK    IV. 


with  capricious  scroll  and  strap  work  with 
obelisque-like  finials.  This  strap- work  deco- 
ration becomes  a  marked  feature  of  the 
style.  Triple  windows,  arched  windows, 
and  those  of  strange  late  Gothic  shape,  are 
used,  as  well  as  the  mullioned  form  com- 
mon in  France.  Bay  windows  and  oriels 
were  built  on  the  fronts  of  the  houses  and 
on  the  angles,  and  the  steep  roofs  are 
studded  with  several  stories  of  dormers. 
Turrets  and  towers,  often  with  roofs  of  fan- 
tastic stape,  are  quite  common. 

In  Germany  as  in  France,  half-timber  fa- 
gades  are  still  frequent  in  the  houses  of  the 
burghers,  especially  in  some  regions.  The 


2l6 


ARCHITECTURE: 


timber  work  is  often  richly  carved,  and  the 
plaster  walls  decorated  in  color  with  quaint 
patterns,  arabesques  and  mottoes.  In  some 
regions  Italian  precedent  was  more  closely 
followed ;  but  where  this  was  the  case  the 
buildings  were  apt  to  be  the  work  of  Italian 
artists,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Belvedere  at 
Prague,  begun  in  1536  by  Paolo  della  Stella, 
or  the  Waldstein  Palace  in  the  same  city, 
built  for  Wallenstein  in  1629.  The  most 
celebrated  building  of  the  German  Renais- 
sance is  undoubtedly  the  castle  at  Heidel- 
berg, of  which  three  wings  belong  to  three 
successive  periods  of  the  style,  viz.,  the 
buildings  of  the  Elector  Frederic  II.  (1544- 
1556),  the  richest  portion  of  the  building  the 
wing  of  Otto  Heinrich  (1556-1559),  and  the 
wing  of  Frederick  IV.,  after  1601. 

The  Renaissance  style  of  Germany  was  of 
short  duration.  It  was  not  fully  established 
until  the  time  of  the  peace  of  Augsburg  in 
1 555, and  it  was  checked  by  the  outbreak  of  the 
Thirty  Years'  War  in  1618.  Little  was  built 
during  this  terrible  time,  and  when  peace 
came  the  style  was  superseded  by  an  imita- 
tion of  the  cold  formalities  of  Louis  XIV.  of 
France,  often  producing  most  uninteresting 
and  barrack-like  structures. 

The  Renaissance  style  of  Belgium  and 
Holland  does  not  differ  essentially  from  that 
of  Germany.  Occasionally  some  of  its  fan- 
tastic details  suggest  Spanish  influence,  but 
in  general  it  may  be  regarded  as  belonging 
to  the  same  movement  as  that  of  Germany. 
Town  halls  and  city  houses  are,  as  in  Ger- 
many, its  principal  monuments.  The  town 
hall  at  Antwerp  (1565),  by  Cornelius  de 
Vriendt,  and  the  town  hall  at  Amsterdam 
are  among  the  most  important  examples. 
In  Holland  brick  was  extensively  employed, 
as  it  was  also  in  north  Germany,  frequently 
with  stone  trimmings. 

Spain,  during  the  middle  ages,  was  some- 
what sharply  divided  politically  into  three 
zones:  the  extreme  north,  chiefly  a  high, 
mountainous  country,  which  was  held  by 
the  Christians;  the  lofty  plateau  of  the  cen- 
ter, which  was  debatable  ground,  the  Moors 
being  gradually  driven  southward;  and  the 
extreme  south,  where  the  Moors  held  out 
longest,  the  kingdom  of  Granada  continuing 
in  the  hands  of  the  Moors  until  the  begin- 


ning of  the  Renaissance  period,  when  in 
1492  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  finally  con- 
quered the  country.  In  the  north  the 
medieval  styles  bore  strong  resemblance  to 
those  of  France,  and  were  hardly  tinged  by 
Moorish  influences.  In  the  center  during 
the  Gothic  period  Moorish  and  Gothic  ele- 
ments mingled  in  various  proportions,  pro- 
ducing most  fantastic  but  romantic  results. 
In  the  south  the  work  was  Moorish.  These 
differences  continued,  but  in  gradually  less- 
ening degrees,  during  the  period  of  the 
Renaissance.  The  new  style  was  intro- 
duced into  Spain  about  the  time  of  the  union 
of  Castile  and  Aragon  under  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella,  when  for  the  first  time  Spain  be- 
came a  united  nation. 

The  earliest  period  of  Renaissance  archi- 
tecture in  Spain  is  known  as  Plateresque 
(from  platero,  a  silversmith),  because  of 
the  extreme  delicacy  and  intricacy  of  the 
lavish  surface  ornaments,  which  was  con- 
centrated especially  about  the  doorways 
and  cornices,  and  which  was  evidently  im- 
itated from  metal  work,  jewelry  and  ob- 
jects of  the  smaller  crafts  imported  in  the 
first  instance  from  Italy.  The  flat-roofed 
buildings  of  Spain  lent  themselves  more 
naturally  to  treatment  with  the  new  forms 
than  the  Gothic  buildings  of  the  north, 
and  the  prevailing  lines  from  the  begin- 
ning are  horizontal.  The  buildings  were 
often  crowned  with  strongly-marked  cor- 
nices, recalling  those  of  Italy  but  much 
richer  in  treatment  and  less  closely  imitat- 
ing classic  forms.  They  were  frequently 
crowned  by  elaborate  parapets,  sometimes 
balustraded,  sometimes  consisting  of  fan- 
tastic pierced  work.  Under  the  cornices 
there  was  apt  to  be  an  open  arcade,  or  a  line 
of  arched  windows  richly  treated  and  having 
almost  the  effect  of  a  frieze.  Generally  the 
walls  were  kept  plain,  or  they  were  orna- 
mented by  evenly-spaced  bosses,  sometimes 
taking  the  form  of  shells,  as  in  the  Casa  de 
las  Conchas  at  Salamanca.  The  main  orna- 
ment was  concentrated  about  the  great  door- 
ways, and  the  effectiveness  of  the  designs 
generally  depends  on  the  striking  contrast 
of  these  concentrated  masses  of  elaborate 
carving  relieved  against  the  plain  wall  sur- 
face, and  on  projecting  points  of  ornaments 


COURTYARD,  ALHAMBRA,  BY  FORTUNY  V.  CARBO. 
Reproduced  by  permission  of  Samuel  Untermeyer. 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


217 


making  strong  glints  of  light  against  sharp 
dots  of  shadow.  Especially  characteristic 
are  the  large  courtyards  (patios]  and  the 
picturesque  stairways. 

Contemporary  with  this  and  showing  many 
of  the  same  general  characteristics  we  find 
a  curious  mixture  of  Renaissance  and  Moor- 
ish forms,  sometimes  one,  sometimes  the 
other  predominating;  and  in  the  center  of 
the  country  Flamboyant  Gothic,  Renaissance 
and  Moorish  elements  are  found  in  the  same 
building,  now  distinguishable  side  by  side, 
now  blending  into  strange  new  forms.  This 
fascinating  work  is  what  is  known  as  the 
style  of  the  Mudejar  or  Moriscos  the  Chris- 
tianized Moors.  Its  apparently  incongruous 
elements  often  produce  a  strangely  weird 
and  romantic  picturesqueness. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  and  close  to  the 
wonderful  palace  of  the  Moorish  kings,  the 
Alhambra  at  Granada,  a  portion  of  which 
was  pulled  down  to  make  room  for  it,  the 
great  palace  of  the  Emperor  Charles  V., 
built  in  strict  classic  Roman  form,  seems 
strangely  out  of  place.  The  exterior  is 
cold,  unattractive  and  not  well  proportioned. 
The  great  circular  court,  however,  is  a  fine 
piece  of  restrained  classic  design.  This  was 
begun  by  the  Spaniard  Machuca  in  1527,  and 
is  the  first  instance  of  the  close  following  of 
the  later  classic  style  of  Rome,  which  in 
slightly  varying  forms  was  soon  to  spread 
over  all  Europe.  It  is  known  in  Spain  as 
the  Griego-Romano,  and  flourished  chiefly 
in  the  following  reign  of  Philip  II.  (1556- 
1598).  The  chief  exponents  of  this  coldly 
classic  manner  were  Alonzo  Berruguete,  who 
completed  Machuca's  work  at  Granada,  and 
Juan  de  Herrera,  the  architect  of  Valladolid 
Cathedral.  The  best-known  work  of  the 
time  is  the  vast  monastery  palace  of  the 
Escurial,  begun  by  Juan  Battista  of  Toledo 
in  1563,  and  continued  by  Herrera.  The 
building  is  monotonous  and  dreary  in  detail, 
but  its  mass,  crowned  by  the  dome  of  the 
great  church,  is  imposing  and  well  com- 
posed, and  its  skyline  at  least  is  varied  and 
picturesque.  This  style  was  continued  into 
the  eighteenth  century,  but  in  its  later 
period  it  was  accompanied,  as  in  Italy, 
France  and  Germany,  by  the  wild  and 
hideous  extravagances  of  the  Rococo,  which 


LA    GIRALDA,    BELL   TOWER    OF   THE   CATHEDRAL    OF 
SEVILLE. 

The  tower  is  Moorish,  from  7/59,  the  belfry  Renaissance,  1568. 


in  Spain  was  often  more  fantastic  and 
revolting  than  elsewhere.  In  two  respects, 
however,  its  work  is  still  in  some  cases 
attractive:  in  the  excellent  placing  of  orna- 
ment in  itself  bad  (following  the  scheme  of 
concentration  of  the  Plateresque),  and  in 
the  picturesque  design  of  many  of  the 


218 


ARCHITECTURE: 


towers.  Some  of  the  most  characteristic 
examples  of  this  style  are  to  be  found  in  the 
great  churches  of  Mexico  and  other  Spanish 
countries  of  America.  It  is  known  as 
Churrigueresque,  from  the  tasteless  designer 
Churriguera,  who  was  among  the  first  to 
use  it. 


R 


ENATSSANCE  ARCHITECTURE 
IN  ENGLAND.  (21) 


The  Gothic  style  persisted  in  Eng- 
land,  particularly  in  domestic 
work,  longer  even  than  in  France  or  Ger- 
many. Hoghton  tower  in  Lancashire,  for 
instance,  still  essentially  late  Gothic,  with 
hardly  an  admixture  of  Renaissance  detail, 
was  built  between  1563  and  1565,  while  in 
the  colleges  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  and 
in  many  of  the  country  houses,  a  species  of 
the  so-called  Tudor  style,  with  some  admix- 
ture of  Renaissance,  persists  until  the  mid- 
dle of  the  seventeenth  century.  In  the 
expression  of  homely  comfort  and  sweet 
domesticity  no  style  ever  equaled  it.  Its 
houses  are  essentially  homes. 

The  Renaissance  forms  were  first  intro- 
duced into  England  by  Italian  workmen 
under  Henry  VIII.,  and  some  very  good 
Italian  Renaissance  detail  may  occasionally 
be  seen  intermingled  with  Gothic  work,  the 
Italian  and  the  Englishman  having  worked 
side  by  side.  Henry  VII. 's  monument  in 
Westminster  Abbey  was  finished  by  Pietro 
Torregiano  in  1519.  But  the  work  of  the 
Italians  imported  by  the  king  and  by  Car- 
dinal Wolsey  had  no  effect  on  the  general 
current  of  building  in  England.  The  Ital- 
ians left  and  were  succeeded  by  Dutch  work- 
men, who,  re-enforced  by  atrocious  pattern 
books,  of  which  a  number  were  published  at 
this  time  in  Germany  and  Holland,  brought 
into  England  their  coarse  and  debased  detail. 
We  hear  of  several  of  them:  Theodore 
Haveus  of  Cleves,  Bernard  Jansen,  and  Giles 
de  Whitt;  but  their  connection  with  definite 
buildings  is  a  matter  of  some  uncertainty. 
Many  statements  with  regard  to  them  rest 
on  tradition  not  much  better  than  that  relat- 
ing to  the  half  mythical  John  of  Padua.  No 
architect  from  Padua  could  have  designed 


the  buildings  with  which  his  name  has  been 
connected.  Better  authenticated  are  the 
records  with  regard  to  Sir  Thomas  Gres- 
ham's  exchange  in  London,  built  between 
1566  and  1570  by  Henry  de  Pas.  Some  of 
the  tiles  for  this  building,  which  was 
destroyed  in  the  Great  Fire  of  London,  were 
imported  from  Holland.  It  consisted  of  a 
group  of  two-storied  buildings  round  a  great 
court,  surrounded  by  an  arcade,  and  seems 
to  have  been  of  fairly  good  style.  But  as  a 
rule  the  forms  introduced  by  the  Dutch  into 
England  were  extravagant  and  lacking  in 
refinement.  Strap- work  ornament  was  com- 
mon, especially  in  the  woodwork  and  plaster 
work  of  the  interiors.  These  debased  ele- 
ments, however,  were  used  by  the  English 
workmen  with  a  frank  directness  and  sim- 
plicity not  without  its  quaint  charm  and 
often  showing  a  true  decorative  perception, 
especially  in  the  simpler  buildings  of  the 
remote  country  places. 

The  great  gallery  of  Haddon  Hall,  with 
its  bays  of  many  mullioned  windows  of  nar- 
row square-headed  lights,  still  late  Gothic  in 
effect,  was  built  between  1567  and  1584.  It 
is  a  characteristic  example  of  the  time. 
While  the  exterior  is  without  a  suggestion 
of  Renaissance  form,  the  woodwork  of  the 
interior  has  quaint  half-classic  pilasters, 
paneling  and  cornice  work  in  which  the 
Dutch  influence  is  quite  apparent.  As  an 
indication  of  the  long  continuance  of  this 
stj'le  compare  this  with  Eyam  Hall  in 
Derbyshire,  built  in  1657.  Here  the  door- 
way is  designed  with  classic  elements;  but 
the  whole  sentiment  of  this  charming  home 
is  distinctly  Tudor.  The  cosy  effect  of  these 
buildings  depends  very  largely  on  their 
smallness  of  scale.  The  amount  of  glass  is 
often  greater  than  in  French  buildings ;  but 
the  individual  openings  (the  lights)  are 
small,  and  window  space  is  obtained  by 
grouping  these  small  openings  together 
divided  by  ranges  of  narrow  mullions.  The 
stories  are  low:  at  Eyam  Hall  only  eight 
feet  from  floor  to  floor.  This  is  widely 
different  from  the  monumental  and  majestic 
scale  of  Italy  or  of  France. 

In  the  houses  of  the  great  nobles  at  this 
time  the  Renaissance  elements  are  much 
more  in  evidence,  and  the  buildings  archi- 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


219 


tecturally  are  frequently  as  unsuccessful 
as  the  more  modest  houses  are  charm- 
ing. Pretentious  display  is  the  evident 
motive  in  too  many  of  them,  as  at  Wol- 
laton  Hall  (1580-1588) — probably  due  to 
a  builder  named  Smithson — and  the  coarse 
Dutch  detail  shows  to  great  disadvantage. 
This  and  other  buildings  of  the  time  have 
been  accredited  to  John  Thorpe  on  account 
of  the  drawings  of  them  remaining  from  his 
hand;  but  Mr.  Blomfield  (in  "Architecture 
of  the  Renaissance  in  England")  has  shown 
good  reason  to  doubt  his  authorship  of  many 
of  these.  In  some  cases  the  new  forms  are 
more  successfully  employed,  sometimes,  as 
at  Montacute  (1580-1601),  with  a  large  ad- 
mixture of  the  Tudor  Gothic  elements, 
sometimes  with  the  Renaissance  forms  pre- 
dominating as  at  Rushton  Hall,  in  North- 
amptonshire, where  they  are  used  with 
much  delicacy.  A  characteristic  example 
of  English  Renaissance  is  the  gate  tower  of 
the  Examination  Schools  at  Oxford,  in  which 
coupled  columns  successively  of  the  five 
orders  with  their  entablatures  are  applied 
on  each  side  of  the  center  of  an  otherwise 
essentially  Tudor  tower  (1600-1636).  During 
all  this  period  half-timbered  houses,  differ- 
ing only  in  detail  from  those  of  medieval 
times,  continue  to  be  built  in  town  and 
country. 

In  the  midst  of  this  Dutch  influence  we 
hear  of  a  certain  John  Smith  who  in  1550 
was  sent  to  Italy  by  the  Duke  of  North- 
umberland, and  who  in  1563  published 
"The  Chief  Groundes  of  Architecture"; 
but  the  first  to  make  use  in  England  of  the 
correct  forms  of  Italian  architecture  was 
Inigo  Jones  (1573-1652).  He  seems  quite 
early  in  life  to  have  gone  to  Italy  to  study 
painting  under  the  patronage  of  the  Earl  of 
Pembroke,  and  later  of  the  Earl  of  Arun- 
del,  and  devoted  his  time  there  also  to  the 
study  of  architecture.  His  first  work  in 
England  was  in  the  making  of  scenery  for 
the  court  masques  In  1613  and  1614  he 
was  again  in  Italy,  and  in  1615  he  was  ap- 
pointed Surveyor-General.  In  1617  he 
began  work  on  a  palace  in  Greenwich  in 
pure  Italian  style,  which  now  forms  the 
center  of  the  royal  naval  school.  In  the 
reign  of  Charles  L,  in  1639,  he  built  an  in- 


congruous classic  colonnaded  portico  in 
front  of  the  old  Gothic  cathedral  of  St. 
Paul's.  But  his  chief  work  was  the  ban- 
queting hall  at  Whitehall,  a  small  fragment 
of  a  stupendous  design  for  a  palace  quite 
beyond  the  resources  of  the  kingdom.  The 
design  is  not  strikingly  original,  but  is 
pleasantly  proportioned.  Its  chief  merit  is 
that  in  spite  of  its  Italian  character  it  con- 
trives to  get  a  distinctly  English  flavor. 
One  of  his  least  agreeable  designs  is  the 
decidedly  Baroque  porch  which  he  added  to 
the  Gothic  church  of  St.  Mary  at  Oxford. 
The  buildings,  however,  in  which  Inigo 
Jones  shows  to  best  advantage  are  in  such 
country  houses  at  Coleshill  and  Brympton. 
Here  he  lays  the  foundations  for  the  dis- 
tinctively English  classic  style.  He  keeps 
the  homelike  expression  of  earlier  English 
work  while  using  as  his  elements  the  pure 
classic  forms. 

This  development  was  continued  by  Sir 
Christopher  Wren  (1632-1723),  who  was 
by  early  training  a  scholar  and  mathe- 
matician, and  whose  attention  was  seriously 
turned  to  architecture  comparatively  late  in 
life.  He  worked  for  a  time  under  Sir  John 
Denham,  Inigo  Jones'  successor  in  the  sur- 
veyor-generalship, designed  some  buildings 
for  the  University  of  Oxford  and  in  1665 
visited  France.  It  was  about  this  time  that 
he  designed  in  a  pure  and  rather  formal 
style,  but  with  the  English  smallness  of 
scale,  the  library  of  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge. His  great  opportunity  came  when 
as  surveyor-general  he  was  called  upon  to 
rebuild  the  churches  of  London  after  the 
Great  Fire  of  1666.  In  the  best  of  these 
churches  he  succeeded  in  giving  a  dis- 
tinctively English  treatment  to  the  classic 
forms.  In  his  designs  for  the  church 
steeples  he  treated  the  general  form  of  the 
Gothic  spire  with  classic  detail  (following  out 
the  suggestion  of  such  lanterns  as  those  of 
the  castle  of  Chambord  and  Hatfield  House, 
and  of  the  crowning  stories  of  Italian  compa- 
nili  with  which  he  may  possibly  have  been 
familiar  from  drawings).  This  is  really  a  new 
and  characteristically  English  development. 
His  greatest  achievement  is  St.  Paul's  cathe- 
dral (1675-1710),  in  which  he  treats  the  long 
plan  of  the  English  church  with  Italian  Re- 


220 


ARCH  I  TEC  TURE: 


naissance  forms,  surmounting  the  crossing 
with  a  great  dome,  in  the  drum  of  which  the 
encircling  colonnade,  suggested  by  Bramante 
in  his  designs  for  St.  Peter's,  is  for  the  first 
time  employed.  Greenwich  Hospital,  Chel- 
sea Hospital,  Kensington  Palace  and  ex- 
tensive additions  to  the  palace  of  Hampton 
Court,  show  his  power  of  giving  a  peculiarly 
English  character  to  the  classic  motives,  and 
in  smaller  country  houses  (the  forerunners 
of  our  own  colonial  work)  he  contrives  by 


Wren's  successors,  Nicholas  Hawksmoor 
(1661-1736)  and  James  Gibbs  (1681-1754), 
continued  his  style;  but  n6t  usually  with 
the  same  success,  save  in  Gibb's  beautiful 
church  of  St.  Martin 's-in-the-Fields,  in 
London,  the  spire  of  which  is  certainly  the 
most  successful  of  the  English  Renaissance, 
and  his  excellent  domed  structure,  Raclcliffe 
Library,  at  Oxford  (1747).  Hawksmoor 
was  somewhat  influenced  by  Sir  John  Van- 
brugh  (1666-1726),  whose  colossal  and  pom- 


ST.  PAUL'S  CATHEDRAL,  LONDON. 


simplicity  of  treatment,  by  his  proportions, 
and  by  moderation  in  scale, to  give,  even  more 
than  Inigo  Jones,  that  peculiarly  homelike 
quality  which  distinguishes  the  best  English 
domestic  work.  This  treatment  was  imitated 
by  simple  craftsmen  all  over  England,  pro- 
ducing buildings  hardly  less  charming  than 
those  of  the  previous  period.  One  of  the 
more  important  examples  of  this  craftsman 
work  is  Clare  College,  Cambridge  (1685),  by 
Robert  Grumbold,  a  stonemason. 


pous  monstrosities,  Blenheim  Palace  and 
Castle  Howard,  aiming  at  the  great  scale 
and  monumental  grandeur  of  the  French 
and  Italian  palaces,  fail  through  awkward 
and  clumsy  proportion  and  detail.  From 
now  on  the  tendency  of  English  architecture 
is  toward  the  cold  and  dry  formalism  largely 
prevalent  in  the  rest  of  Europe.  England 
was  saved  the  vagaries  of  the  Rococo ;  but 
in  most  of  these  buildings  of  the  last  half  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  in  which  her  archi- 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


221 


tects  fancied  they  were  following  the  foot- 
steps of  Palladio,  giving  to  the  work  of  this 
period  the  name  of  the  Palladian  style,  the 
proportions  are  poor  and  the  conceptions 
uninteresting.  The  style  is  utterly  lack- 
ing in  vitality  and  imagination.  Somerset 
House,  in  London,  by  Sir  William  Cham- 
bers (1726-1796)  is  perhaps  one  of  the  most 
successful  buildings  of  the  period.  Its 
vestibule  is  especially  dignified.  The  arti- 
ficial motive  of  the  time  is  shown  in  the  title 
given  to  one  of  the  principal  publications  of 
these  years,  "Vitruvius  Brittanicus, "  in 
which  Colin  Campbell  publishes  a  large 
number  of  designs  by  himself  and  his  con- 
temporaries. 


M 


ODERN  ARCHITECTURE  IN 
FRANCE  AND  GERMANY.  (22) 


The  French  Revolution  inter- 
rupted but  did  not  change  the 
general  current  of  French  art.  Already 
during  the  reign  of  Louis  XVI.  a  new  tend- 
ency had  shown  itself.  The  reaction 
against  the  wild  extravagances  of  Oppenard 
and  his  imitators  led  partly  to  a  more  strict 
imitation  and  revival  of  ancient  Roman 
forms.  But  a  new  direction  was  given  to 
this  reaction  by  the  awakened  interest  in 
Greek  art.  The  English  architects,  Stuart 
and  Revett,  published  their  great  work  on 
"The  Antiquities  of  'Athens"  in  1762. 
They  were  followed  by  the  Frenchmen 
Leroy  in  1770,  and  Choiseul-Gouffier  in 
1780.  About  the  same  time  Lagardette 
measured  and  published  the  Greek  temples 
of  Psestum  in  South  Italy,  and  the  order  of 
the  temple  of  Neptune  was  imitated  in  1780 
by  Brongniart  in  his  convent  of  the  Capu- 
cins.  These  changes  marked  an  attempt  to 
recover  from  the  vagaries  of  the  decline  of 
Renaissance  art  by  the  fatal  endeavor  to 
revive  by  direct  imitation  the  styles  of 
past  ages.  This  distinctly  modern,  merely 
imitative  impulse  has,  however,  been  less 
marked  in  France  than  in  other  countries. 

During  the  Revolution  and  the  Republic 
architecture  in  France  was  at  a  standstill. 
Men's  minds  were  grimly  occupied  with 
other  things.  But  after  the  establishment 


of  Bonaparte  as  Emperor  there  was  at  once 
unusual  activity.  The  tendency  to  revive 
Greek  architecture  was  overborne  by  the 
influence  of  Napoleon  himself,  who  in  all 
things  endeavored  to  imitate  the  glories  of 
the  Roman  Empire.  In  doing  this,  however, 
he  only  gave  point  to  an  impulse  already  man- 
ifested under  the  Republic.  The  two  de- 
signers most  influential  in  this  movement 
were  two  young  architects,  Percier  and  Fon- 
taine, whom  lack  of  occupation  under  the 
Republic  had  forced  to  the  designing  of  fur- 
niture, stuffs,  decorations,  and  utensils  of 
various  kinds,  giving  form  to  the  curious 
passion  of  the  time  for  masquerading  as 
ancient  Romans.  Percier  and  Fontaine  in- 
deed may  be  said  to  have  created  that  peculiar 
adaptation  of  Roman  forms  to  modern  deco- 
ration and  furniture  known  as  the  style  of 
the  Empire.  Under  Napoleon  as  Emperor, 
to  whose  direct  personal  impulse  nearly  all 
the  important  works  of  architecture  in  Paris 
at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century 
are  due,  Percier  and  Fontaine  found  more 
important  occupation.  They  were  em- 
ployed to  connect  the  Louvre  with  the 
Tuileries.  Only  a  portion  of  the  connecting 
buildings  was  constructed  at  the  time,  and 
in  the  final  completion  of  this  project  under 
Napoleon  III.  their  plan  was  altered.  They 
erected  also  in  the  great  court  between  the 
two  palaces  the  Arc  du  Carrousel,  which  is  a 
close  imitation  of  the  triumphal  arch  of 
Septimius  Severus  in  Rome.  Perhaps  their 
most  remarkable  work  is  the  well-known 
arcades  of  the  Rue  de  Rivoli.  More  remarka- 
ble than  the  Arc  du  Carrousel  is  the  colossal 
Arcde  1'Etoile  (p.  222),  a  grandly  simple  and 
quite  original  design  by  Chalgrin,  in  which 
the  simple  and  majestic  forms  of  the  arch 
and  its  abutments  are  allowed  to  have  their 
effect  tmdisturbed  by  applied,  merely  deco- 
rative columns.  This,  the  largest  triumphal 
arch  ever  built,  and  perhaps  the  most  beau- 
tiful, was  begun  in  1806,  but  not  completed 
until  1836,  long  after  the  fall  of  the  Empire. 
In  1806  Le  Pere  and  Qoudouin  erected  the 
Colonne  Vendome,  hardly  more  than  a  copy 
of  the  Column  of  Trajan  in  Rome.  In  1807 
the  vast  portico  of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies 
was  begun  by  the  architect  Poyet.  It  was 
placed  directly  opposite  the  end  of  the  Pont 


222 


ARCHITECTURE: 


de  la  Concorde,  its  twelve  columns  sur- 
mounted by  a  pediment,  like  a  Roman 
temple,  thus  completing  the  majestic  en- 
semble of  the  square  and  carrying  its  motive 
across  the  river.  Between  1808  and  1826 
the  new  Bourse,  a  building  surrounded  by  a 
Corinthian  peristyle,  was  built  by  Brongni- 
art. 

In  1808,  by  order  of  the  emperor,  on  the 
site  where  a  church  of  La  Madelaine  had 
been  begun  during  the  reign  of  Louis  XV., 
the  beginning  was  made  from  the  designs  of 
Vignon  of  the  huge  building  now  known  as 
the  Madelaine.  It  was  intended  by  the 
emperor  as  a  temple  of  glory  to  be  inscribed 
"L'empereur  Napoleon  aux  soldats  de  la 
grande  armee."  "It  is  not,"  he  wrote,  "a 


ARC    DE    L  ETOILE    IN    PARIS. 

church  that  I  want,  but  a  temple. "  Within, 
it  was  to  contain,  inscribed  on  tables  of 
gold,  the  names  of  all  the  soldiers  of  the  em- 
peror's armies  who  had  died  in  battle,  with 
statues  of  the  marshals  and  generals.  The 
exterior  of  the  building  was  practically 
complete  at  the  downfall  of  the  empire,  and 
was  allowed  to  remain ;  but  the  interior  was 
modified  in  the  endeavor  to  make  it  suitable 
for  a  church.  Vignon  continued  as  its 
architect  until  his  death  in  1828,  and  the 
building  was  finished  substantially  accord- 
ing to  his  designs  in  1842.  It  still  remains 
in  form  a  colossal  Roman  temple,  not  a 
church.  Its  great  pedimental  portico  is  seen 
closing  the  vista,  as  from  the  Pont  de  la 
Concorde  one  looks  across  the  square  be- 


tween the  colonnades  of  the  Garde  Meuble 
and  the  Ministere  de  la  Marine  up  the  Rue 
Royale  thus  completing  one  of  the  most  im- 
posing architectural  ensembles  of  the  modern 
world.  Within,  it  is  roofed  with  three  flat 
domes  resting  on  piers  marked  by  colossal 
columns  between  which  run  smaller  Ionic 
colonnades  which  by  contrast  give  great 
scale  to  its  majestic  interior.  It  is  har- 
moniously decorated  with  colored  marbles 
and  gilding.  These  are  only  some  of  the 
more  important  and  characteristic  of  the 
buildings  of  the  first  empire. 

After  its  fall  a  reaction  against  the  close 
imitation  of  the  antique  set  in;  but  few 
buildings  of  marked  importance  were  under- 
taken until  about  1830,  when  another 
attempt  was  made  to  revive  Greek  forms, 
but  with  the  endeavor  to  use  them  logically 
in  the  fulfillment  of  modern  requirements, 
In  the  church  of  St.  Vincent  de  Paul  Hittorff 
(the  author  of  the  great  work  on  the  Sicilian 
Greek  temples)  applies  the  Greek  forms  with 
but  little  change,  but  in  a  later  work,  the 
great  railroad  station,  the  Gare  du  Nord,  he 
uses  them  in  a  frank  and  by  no  means  un- 
successful solution  of  an  entirely  modern 
problem.  The  Greek  forms  are  still  farther 
modified  in  the  front  of  the  Palais  de  Justice 
by  Due,  the  library  of  the  School  of  Fine 
Arts  by  Duban,  and  the  library  of  Ste. 
Genevieve  by  Labrouste,  in  which  arches 
are  used  although  the  moldings  are  distinctly 
of  Greek  character.  This  endeavor  to  treat 
modern  architecture  in  the  Greek  spirit  and 
with  Greek  refinement  in  the  moldings  is 
known  as  the  N£o-Grec.  Under  the  second 
empire  this  movement  continues  and  power- 
fully qualifies  much  of  the  work  of  that  time 
(1852-1870).  Napoleon  III.  revived  the  proj- 
ect of  connecting  the  Louvre  and  the  Tuil- 
eries,  and  carried  it  to  successful  completion 
under  Visconti  and  Lefuel.  The  motives  of 
the  older  portions  of  the  Louvre,  with  their 
pavilions,  Mansard  roofs  and  orders  in 
many  stories,  were  revived,  but  treated 
with  the  modern  spirit  and  not  unaffected 
by  the  Neo-Grec.  The  most  influential 
building  of  this  period  and  one  of  the  most 
splendid  is  the  new  Opera  House,  by 
Qarnier.  Its  fagade,  in  spite  of  some 
defects  of  detail,  is  one  of  the  noblest  and 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


223 


perhaps  the  most  effect- 
ive of  modern  times; 
but  in  the  interior,  es- 
pecially, in  spite  of 
grandeur  and  original- 
ity of  conception  and 
powerful  composition, 
the  effect  is  marred  by 
detail  in  which  the  ex- 
travagant forms  of  the 
Rococo  are  recalled, 
but  treated  with  the 
precision  of  the  Neo- 
Grec.  Gamier  in  this 
work  set  the  fashion  for 
that  striving  for  the 
merely  novel,  which 
has  characterized  so 
much  of  recent  French 
architecture  in  its 
reaction  against  the 

stiff  formalism  and  mere  archaeological  imita- 
tion of  the  previous  periods. 

During  this  time  great  attention  was 
given  to  medieval  architecture  by  a  certain 
school  headed  by  Viollet=le=Duc,  but  it  occu- 
pied itself  mainly  with  the  restoration  of 
medieval  monuments.  In  the  churches  of 
this  time  a  curious  attempt  was  made  to 
levive  the  forms  of  Romanesque  architec- 
ture;  but  in  the  hands  of  men  of  classic 
training  it  produced  most  uninteresting  and 
commonplace  results,  utterly  lacking  in  the 
vitality  and  charm  of  the  medieval  originals 
it  professed  to  improve  upon.  One  of  the 
most  pretentious  and  elaborate  of  these 
buildings  is  the  church  of  Sacre-Coeur  at 
Montmartre.  In  some  of  the  churches  by 
Vaudremer  a  basilican  motive  was  treated 
in  the  Byzantine  manner  with  a  carefully 
studied  refinement,  somewhat  cold,  but  not 
without  interest  and  beauty.  During  late 
years,  in  spite  of  some  noble  buildings  such 
as  Nenot's  New  Sorbonne,  the  mere  striving 
for  originality  as  an  end  in  itself  and  the 
tendency  to  seek  suggestion  in  the  debased 
forms  of  the  Rococo,  has  led  to  a  marked 
decline  in  the  excellence  of  French  architec- 
ture, and  has  produced  forms  which  have 
little  but  novelty  to  recommend  them. 

During  the  century  just  closing  the  Ger- 
man countries  even  more  than  France  have 


THE    OPERA    HOUSE    IN    PARIS. 

seen  the  revival  of  many  styles  of  former 
days  and  other  lands;  but  have  produced  no 
new  development.  Meritorious  as  are  the 
works  of  some  German  architects,  the 
country  as  a  whole  has  not  shown  that 
continuous  movement  and  vitality  which,  in 
spite  of  revivals  and  in  spite  of  debasement, 
has  persisted  in  France. 

After  the  cold  classicism  which  imitated 
the  French  work  of  Louis  XIV.  and  the 
vagaries  of  the  Rococo  (as  in  the  Zwinger 
Palace  in  Dresden, or  the  church  of  St.  Charles 
Borromeo,  Vienna)  there  came  as  in  France  a 
revival  of  Greek  forms.  In  Germany,  how- 
ever, this  revival  (which  affected  more  or  less 
all  European  countries)  was  more  generally 
followed  than  in  France,  and  produced  more 
successful  results  than  in  any  other  country. 
One  of  the  first  instances  of  this  was  in  the 
Brandenburg  Gate  in  Berlin  (1784),  in  which 
the  Greek  Doric  order  was  used.  But  the 
greatest  imitators  of  the  Greek  forms  were 
Friedrich  Schinkel  (1771-1841),  and  Leo  von 
Klenze  (1784-1864).  Schinkel's  Old  Mu- 
seum in  Berlin,  with  its  portico  of  eighteen 
Ionic  columns,  his  Theatre  at  Berlin  (1821), 
and  Von  Klenze's  Ruhmeshalle  at  Munich 
(a  portico  surrounding  a  colossal  bronze 
statue  of  Bavaria),  his  Walhalla  at  Ratisbon 
(closely  copied  from  the  Parthenon),  Gate- 
way and  Glyptothek  (Sculpture  Gallery)  at 


224 


ARCHITECTURE: 


Munich,  may  be  mentioned  as  examples. 
Schinkel  employed  also  other  styles,  as  in 
the  Redern  Palace  in  Berlin,  where  the 
precedents  of  the  Florentine  Renaissance  are 
somewhat  freely  used.  In  Vienna  Theodor 
Hansen's  Parliament  House  may  be  men- 
tioned, one  of  the  splendid  monumental 
group  which  surroimds  the  Franzenring  and 
which  includes  also  the  City  Hall,  Univer- 
sity and  Theater.  It  may  be  well  to  name 
here  also  Hansen's  Academy  of  Science  at 
Athens,  where  German  architects  at  this 
time  carried  out  several  buildings.  Pro- 
fessor Hamlin  well  sums  up  the  Greek  re- 


THE    OPERA    HOUSE    IN    BERLIN. 


vival  in  Germany  when  he  says  that  it 
"presents  -the  aspect  of  a  sincere  striving 
after  beauty,  on  the  part  of  a  limited  num- 
ber of  artists  of  great  talent,  misled  by  the 
idea  that  the  forms  of  a  dead  civilization 
could  be  galvanized  into  new  life  in  the 
service  of  modern  needs."  The  Greek 
revival  was  followed  by  a  revival  of  medieval 
Romanesque  and  Gothic  forms.  Some  of 
the  churches  in  Rhenish  Romanesque  style 
have  not  been  without  interest;  but  the 
Neo-Gothic  buildings  in  Germany,  and  still 
more  in  Austria,  have  been  dull  and  uninter- 
esting. The  mechanical  character  of  both 
their  conception  and  execution  is  absolutely 


at  variance  with  the  Gothic  spirit.  One  of 
the  strongest  architects  Germany  has  pro- 
duced was  Gottfried  Semper,  well  known  as 
a  writer  on  art  as  well  as  an  architect. 
Semper  used  classic,  generally  Italian 
motives;  but  handled  them  with  more  free- 
dom and  feeling  than  has  generally  been 
shown  by  the  German  designers  of  modern 
times.  Semper's  theater  at  Dresden  (1841), 
(destroyed  by  fire  in  1870)  his  Oppenheim 
Palace  in  the  same  city,  and  the  town  hall 
at  Winterthur  (1865-1866)  are  among  his 
most  characteristic  buildings. 

During   recent    years   German    designers 
have  been  flounder- 
ing amid  futile  imi- 
"i  tations    of    all    the 

styles.  Some  of  the 
worst  productions 
are  the  result  of  a 
recent  craze  for  the 
Rococo,  or  of  ill- 
advised  attempts  at 
eclectic  design. 
Some  of  the  best 
have  been  due  to 
the  revived  use  of 
the  German  Renais- 
sance work  of  the 
sixteenth  century, 
in  which  manner 
the  German  spirit 
still  seems  most 
easily  to  express  it- 
(1741)-  self. 

In  monumental 
buildings  the  Italian 

Renaissance  style  of  the  Roman  period  has 
often  been  effectively  and  intelligently 
employed  as  in  Von  Neureuther's  Technical 
High  School  at  Munich  (1870),  or  the  ele- 
ments of  the  classic  Roman  revival,  as  in 
the  building  for  the  University  of  Strass- 
burg  by  Dr.  Warth  (1872),  the  magnificent 
Technical  High  School  at  Charlottenburg, 
Berlin  by  Lucae,  Hitzig  and  Raschdorff 
(1878-1884),  or  the  university  buildings  in 
Vienna  by  von  Ferstel  (1874-1884).  One 
of  the  largest  undertakings  has  been  the 
new  Houses  of  Parliament  at  Berlin  by  Paul 
Wallot ;  but  it  is  extravagant  in  detail  and 
unpleasant  in  general  mass. 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


225 


In  Belgium  may  be  mentioned  the  huge 
and  heavy  pile  of  the  Palace  of  Justice  by 
Polaert;  pompous  and  theatrical,  it  is  most 
unsatisfactory  as  a  work  of  art. 

Everywhere  it  seems  as  if  original  impulse 
had  for  the  time  expended  itself;  and  since 
vital  architecture  has  always  been  devel- 
oped by  the  concentrated  energy  of  peoples, 
there  seems  little  hope  of  new  and  really 
living  development  so  long  as  the  nations 
are  without  artistic  ideals  and  drift  away 
from  the  path  of  simple  and  straightforward 
expression  ,into  that  of  vacillating  attempts 
to  revive  different  styles. 


M 


ODERN  ARCHITECTURE  IN 
ENGLAND.  (23) 


As  a  reaction  against  the  dry  and 
uninteresting  classicism,  the  so- 
called  "Palladian"  style  of  the  latter  part  of 
the  eighteenth  century  in  England,  came 
the  Greek  revival.  The  marvels  of  ancient 
Athens,  made  known  in  1762  by  the  great  pub- 
lication of  James  Stuart  and  Nicholas  Revett, 
were  the  more  impressive  in  that  they  came 
with  the  freshness  of  novelty.  As  they 
were  more  and  more  studied,  these  forms 
seemed  to  offer  a  ready  escape  from  the 
tiresome  formalism  of  the  day.  Unfortu- 
nately, it  was  merely  the  outward  form  that 
the  designers  endeavored  to  copy,  without 
any  apprehension  of  the  underlying  prin- 
ciples, which  were  much  less  understood  in 
England  than  in  Germany.  This  imitation 
of  Greek  forms  hardly  shows  itself,  however, 
until  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. The  Greco-Roman  order  of  the  tem- 
ple at  Tivoli  was  copied  on  an  enlarged  scale 
by  Sir  John  Soane  in  the  Bank  of  England 
(1788).  James  Wyatt  (1743-1813)  (notorious 
for  the  injury  he  did  by  his  so-called 
''restorations"  of  many  of  the  English 
cathedrals,  during  which  he  absolutely 
destroyed  important  medieval  monuments, 
such  as  the  Norman  Chapter  House  at 
Durham)  used  a  species  of  Greek  in  Bowdon 
Park,  and  a  sham  Gothic  style  in  the  manor 
of  Fonthill  Abbey,  Wiltshire,  and  was  ready 
indeed  to  try  his  hand  at  any  style,  Greek, 
Roman,  or  medieval.  But  neither  the 


medieval  nor  the  Greek  styles  were  suffi- 
ciently understood  at  this  time  to  be  intelli- 
gently used.  Early  in  the  century  Greek 
Doric  and  Ionic  columns  came  to  be  applied 
to  the  fronts  of  private  houses,  public  build- 
ings and  churches,  all  of  which  were  made 
to  look  as  much  like  Greek  temples  as  pos- 
sible, quite  without  any  regard  to  propriety 
of  expression.  This  movement,  side  by  side 
with  others,  continued  until  after  the  middle 
of  the  century.  Its  most  important  build- 
ing is  perhaps  the  British  Museum,  by  Sir 
Robert  Smirke,  in  which  a  Greek  Ionic 
colonnade  is  applied  to  the  front  of  a  building 
totally  un-Greek  in  character,  to  which  it 
has  very  little  relation.  St.  Pancras  Church 
in  London,  by  Inwood,  and  a  number  of 
churches  by  Thompson,  of  Glasgow,  may 
also  be  named.  Abotit  1840  a  tendency  to 
copy  the  High  Renaissance  of  Italy  shows 
itself.  This  appears  especially  in  the  city 
clubs,  to  which  it  was  supposed  to  be  par- 
ticularly appropriate  and  which  were  made 
to  look  as  much  like  Italian  palaces  as  pos- 
sible. In  the  Carlton  Club  Smirke  copied 
the  motive  of  Sansovino's  library  of  St.  Mark 
at  Venice.  In  the  Reform  Club  (1840)  Sir 
Charles  Barry  followed  the  Farnese  Palace 
in  Rome.  In  the  Traveler's  Club  he  copied 
Rafael's  Pandolfini  Palace  at  Florence. 
Parnell  &  Smith,  in  the  Army  and  Navy 
Club,  imitated  the  Palazzo  Cornaro  at 
Venice.  Almost  the  only  important  build- 
ing in  England  which  followed  the  revival  of 
the  style  of  Imperial  Rome  was  Elmes'  St. 
Georges  Hall  in  Liverpool,  finished  in  1854. 
This  is  perhaps  the  most  successful  building 
in  classic  style  in  England.  The  classic 
forms  are  used  with  more  knowledge  and 
spontaneity  than  in  most  English  work. 

During  this  same  period,  and  partly  even 
in  the  hands  of  the  same  architects,  a  revival 
of  English  medieval  forms  took  place.  This 
movement  dates  back  even  to  the  time  of  Sir 
Christopher  Wren,  who  tried  his  hand  at 
Gothic  design  in  St.  Dunstan's  in  the  east, 
and  in  the  west  front  of  Westminster  Abbey, 
examples  which  show  how  little  he  appre- 
ciated either  the  sentiment  or  the  principles 
of  the  style.  He  was  followed,  as  we  have 
seen,  by  Wyatt  in  several  theatrical  imita- 
tions of  castellated  manors  in  which  the 


226 


ARCHITECTURE: 


HOUSES    OF    PARLIAMENT,    LONDON.       SEEN   FROM    THE   THAMES. 


Gothic  detail  was  misused  in  most  ignorant 
fashion.  The  first  to  have  any  appreciation 
of  what  Gothic  architecture  really  was  was 
Augustus  Welby  Pugin  (1812-1852),  who 
apart  from  his  work  in  numerous  churches 
had  a  strong  influence  on  the  current  of 
English  architecture  through  his  writings, 
"A  Contrast  between  the  Architecture  of  the 
Fourteenth  and  Nineteenth  Centuries,"  and 
especially  by  his  "True  Principles  of  Chris- 
tian Architecture"  (1841).  This  Gothic  re- 
vival was  greatly  strengthened  by  the 
Tractarian  or  High-Church  movement  (1833- 
1841).  Already  in  1839  the  new  Houses  of 
Parliament  had  been  begun  by  Sir  Charles 
Barry  in  perpendicular  Gothic  style,  this 
style  having  been  fixed  upon  by  the  govern- 
ment. In  this  Barry  was  assisted  by  Pugin. 
This  building,  although  monotonous  in  treat- 
ment, is  picturesque  and  dignified,  and  the 
great  Victoria  Tower  is  certainly  a  noble 
creation.  Pugin  was  followed  by  Sir  Gil- 
bert Scott  (1811-1878),  also  mainly  a  church 
architect.  Most  of  the  English  Gothic  styles 
were  successively  followed  with  an  intelli- 
gence and  archaeological  correctness  which 
often  produced  works  attractive  and  digni- 
fied, but  lacking  in  real  vitality.  Younger 


contemporaries  of  Sir  Gilbert  Scott  were 
George  Edmund  Street  and  William  Bur- 
gess. These  men  endeavored  to  bring 
variety  into  the  English  medieval  styles  by 
borrowing  from  those  of  the  continent. 
Street,  who  is  the  author  of  "Brick  and 
Marble  Architecture  in  Italy,"  varied  his 
English  medieval  detail  by  suggestions  from 
Northern  Italian  Gothic,  while  Burgess  fol- 
lowed the  precedents  of  thirteenth  century 
France  quite  as  much  as  those  of  England. 
Both  these  men  had  the  merit  of  treating 
the  revived  style  with  more  freedom.  The 
most  important  work  of  these  years  is 
Street's  Law  Courts  in  London,  an  ill- 
planned  and  confused  pile  of  buildings, 
lacking  in  composition  in  any  large  sense, 
but  full  of  charming  features  and  correct  in 
its  following  of  Gothic  precedent.  One  of 
the  ablest  of  the  architects  of  these  years 
was  Godwin,  who  largely  under  the  influ- 
ence of  the  writings  of  Ruskin  turned  even 
more  than  Street  to  Italian  precedents, 
which  he  used  with  great  freedom  and 
charm.  Mr.  Alfred  Waterhouse,  who  is 
still  active,  belonged  during  these  years  to 
the  same  school.  His  most  attractive  work 
is  the  Assize  Courts  at  Manchester.  Larger 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


227 


but  hardly  so  successful  is  the  Manchester 
Town  Hall.  Both  of  these  buildings  show 
some  following  of  French,  as  well  as  of 
English  precedents ;  but  the  detail  is  more 
mechanical  and  less  interesting  than  that  of 
the  other  prominent  men  of  the  school. 
Beside  the  more  important  architects  who 
followed  the  Gothic  revival  were  a  host  of 
lesser  men,  some  of  whom  did  excellent 
work.  On  the  whole,  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  the  effect  of  this  revival  on  English 
architecture  in  the  low  estate  to  which  it  had 
fallen  has  been  salutary.  On  the  other 
hand,  much  mediocre  and  much  wretched 
work  was  done  during  these  years  by  men  of 
no  talent  and  little  training,  who  sometimes 
tried  to  follow  in  the  steps  of  the  Gothic 
revivalist,  and  who  sometimes  indulged  in 
an  ignorant  eclecticism.  Among  the  abler 
men  of  this  time  must  be  mentioned  also 
Mr.  Norman  Shaw,  who  during  his  earlier 
years  must  be  counted  as  a  member  of  the 
Gothic  school,  and  who  is  best  known  by  a 
series  of  most  picturesque  country  houses  of 
late  medieval  style,  many  of  them  half-tim- 
bered, erected  in  different  parts  of  England. 
In  more  recent  years  Mr.  Shaw's  name 
has  been  associated  with  what  is  known  as 
the  Queen  Anne  revival.  There  never  was 
a  style  which  could  properly  be  called  the 
Queen  Anne  style.  During  the  reign  of 
that  Queen  Sir  Christopher  Wren  was  at  the 
height  of  his  power;  he  was  finishing  St. 
Paul's  cathedral,  and  was  engaged  upon  the 
works  at  Greenwich  Hospital,  Hampton 
Court  and  other  important  undertakings. 
In  the  country  places  at  that  time  many 
buildings  were  built  of  brick  with  stone  or 
wood  trimmings,  some  by  Wren  himself, 
some  by  lesser  men.  Some  of  these  build- 
ings retained  the  high  gables,  steep  roofs 
and  lofty  chimneys  of  an  earlier  period, 
together  with  the  classic  detail  of  the  time. 
This  was  often  executed  in  brick,  the  mold- 
ings of  which  were  cut  by  hand  after  the 
brick  was  laid,  and  even  brick  carving  was 
used.  Such  work  as  this  was  built  in  Eng- 
land even  before  Queen  Anne's  time,  and 
continued  after  her  death;  but  it  was  this 
particular  phase  of  the  architecture  of  the 
later  Renaissance  in  England  which  the 
Queen  Anne  revivalists  seized  upon  in  their 


desire  for  a  new  sensation.  This  so-called 
Queen  Anne  style  the  revivalist  used  occa- 
sionally with  much  spirit.  It  was  a  reaction 
against  the  too  exclusively  archaeological 
trend  of  the  Gothic  men.  But  it  did  not 
produce  any  works  of  importance:  it  was 
obviously  a  style  suited  only  to  domestic 
work  or  to  small  country  buildings,  and  in 
the  hands  of  the  so-called  eclectics  it  is  re- 
sponsible for  some  atrociously  ugly  build- 
ings. Mr.  Waterhouse  of  late  years  has  in 
some  instances  used  a  species  of  Roman- 
esque style,  as  in  the  much-criticised 
Natural  History  Museum  at  South  Kensing- 
ton, London. 

During  the  last  decades,  side  by  side  with 
examples  of  the  various  styles  of  work 
already  named,  two  distinct  tendencies  are 
to  be  noted.  On  the  one  hand,  men  like 
the  late  J.  D.  Sedding,  and  Bodley,  and 
Garner,  in  church  architecture,  and  Ernest 
George  and  Peto  in  domestic  work,  use  the 
English  Gothic  precedents  with  a  freedom, 
originality  and  power  which  has  already 
accomplished  splendid  results;  and  on  the 
other  hand,  there  is  a  revival  of  the  late 
English  Renaissance  work  of  Sir  Chris- 
topher Wren  and  his  immediate  successors 
which  is  also  being  employed — not  in  any 
archaeological  spirit,  but  with  vigor  and 
freedom — by  such  men  as  Belcher,  and 
Macartney,  Blomfield  and  others.  Re- 
cently a  number  of  very  important  public 
buildings  have  been  undertaken  in  this 
style  in  London  and  elsewhere.  These 
buildings  at  any  rate  have  the  merit  of  spon- 
taneity and  vitality,  even  in  their  less  suc- 
cessful results,  and  they  are  distinctively 
English.  The  best  buildings  in  this  style, 
however,  are  after  all  not  the  important 
public  buildings,  but  the  dwelling  houses  in 
city  and  country.  For  the  English  have 
never  had  the  monmnental  sense  of  the 
French  and  Italians,  while  on  the  other 
hand  no  people  has  ever  been  so  successful 
in  the  building  of  homes,  buildings  which 
seem  to  be  the  very  expression  of  all  that  is 
best  in  the  intimate  English  family  life. 
While  much  of  the  work  now  being  done  in 
England  is  still  vulgar,  commonplace  and 
ignorant,  the  average  of  English  architec- 
ture has  greatly  improved  since  the  middle 


228 


ARCHITECTURE: 


of  the  century,  and  perhaps  nowhere  in  the 
world  has  such  good  work  been  done  during 
the  last  decade  as  in  the  best  of  the  domestic 
and  church  work  of  England.  It  is  worthy 
of  note  that  in  England  as  in  Germany  the 
architects  have  been  most  successful  when 
they  employed  a  style  of  indigenous  growth 
as  a  point  of  departure. 


A 


RCHITECTURE    IN    THE    UNI- 
TED STATES.(24) 


When  the  English  colonists  early 
in  the  seventeenth  century  began 
to  settle  along  the  Atlantic  seaboard  from 
New  England  to  Virginia,  they  were  at  first 
too  much  occupied  by  the  hard  necessities 
of  life  to  erect  anything  that  could  be  called 
architecture.  Nevertheless,  the  simple 
wooden  cottages  they  built,  and  of  which 
there  are  a  few  remains,  especially  in  New 
England,  are  of  interest,  particularly  as 
showing  the  traditions  of  English  medieval 
craftsmanship  which  the  colonists  brought 
over  with  them.  The  oldest  portion  of  the 
Fairbanks  house  at  Dedham,  near  Boston, 
which  was  added  to  twice  during  the  eight- 
eenth century,  is  probably  the  oldest  and 
one  of  the  most  interesting  of  these  cottages 
(1636).  Such  houses  consisted  usually  of  a 
single  room  below,  with  a  huge  fireplace 
and  chimney  at  one  end,  and  a  staircase 
beside  the  chimney  leading  into  the  garret 
in  the  steep  roof,  which  was  all  there  was 
by  way  of  second  story.  In  the  larger 
houses  (such  as  the  Fairbanks  house)  the 
door  was  in  the  center,  leading  into  a  small 
entry  with  a  room  on  either  hand.  In  this 
case  the  chimney  was  in  the  center,  with  a 
laige  fireplace  (often  twelve  feet  wide)  in 
each  of  the  lower  rooms.  In  some  of  the 
houses,  especially  in  the  towns,  the  second 
story  overhung,  and  in  the  Sueton  Grant 
house  at  Newport  (1670)  there  are  turned 
drops  underneath  the  posts  of  the  second 
story,  ornamenting  the  overhang.  A  house 
with  a  simpler  overhanging  story  stood  in 
Salem  Street,  Boston,  until  a  few  years  ago. 
These  houses  had  casement  windows  with 
diamond  leaded  glass  like  the  cottages  of 
England.  Some  of  the  sash  of  such  win- 


dows, with  the  original  leading,  are  still  pre- 
served in  the  Fairbanks  house  at  Dedham, 
although  the  windows  were  provided  in  the 
eighteenth  century  with  sash  of  the  later 
fashion.  In  all  these  buildings  the  methods  of 
framing  are  those  of  the  medieval  craftsman. 
Many  of  these  houses  had  the  spaces  between 
the  timbers  of  the  frame  filled  in  with  brick, 
although  the  whole  wall  was  covered  with 
clapboards.  Precisely  such  houses  may  be 
found  in  certain  parts  of  England,  especially 
in  Kent  and  Surrey.  A  few  houses  were  built 
of  brick  at  this  time;  but  they  were  of  very 
simple  character,  almost  without  architectural 
detail.  Such  is  the  so-called  Craddock  house 
at  Medford,  Mass,  (probably  about  1650), 
which  has  the  gambrel  roof  (or  gabled  roof  of 
double  slope),  and  the  Wade  house  in  the  same 
place  (before  1689),  which  has  the  ordinary 
triangular  gable  end.  The  meeting-houses 
of  this  time  were  as  simple  as  the  dwellings. 
Before  the  close  of  the  century,  however, 
some  degree  of  elaboration  was  introduced, 
especially  in  the  interior,  the  details  being 
precisely  like  those  of  the  contemporary  Re- 
naissance work  of  England.  The  "Old  Ship" 
church  at  Hingham, Mass., of  1681,  still  stands 
substantially  as  built.  It  is  nearly  square, 
with  a  highpitched  hip  roof  surmounted  by 
a  lantern,  or  species  of  light  wooden  spire. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  century,  building 
with  brick  became  more  common  in  the 
large  towns.  Boston  passed  an  ordinance 
against  wooden  houses  in  the  town  as  early 
as  1679.  This  was  allowed  to  remain  prac- 
tically a  dead  letter  until  1692  when  it  was 
re-enacted.  One  brick  house  of  this  time 
still  remains  standing  in  Washington  Street. 
During  the  eighteenth  century, and  especially 
after  about  1725,  a  little  more  of  architectural 
character  was  introduced  into  the  houses. 
In  New  England  these  were  still  largely  of 
wood;  but  in  Pennsylvania,  Maryland  and 
Virginia  even  country  houses  were  often 
built  of  brick.  The  great  mansions  of  Vir- 
ginia often  have  a  good  deal  of  dignity,  and 
recall  on  a  more  modest  scale  the  contem- 
porary manor-houses  of  the  mother  country. 
The  architectural  detail  (window  and  door 
enframements,  cornices,  etc.)  were  always  of 
wood  even  when  the  walls  were  of  brick. 
But  this  was  not  infrequently  the  case  even 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN, 


229 


with  the  country  houses  of  England  in  the 
eighteenth  century.  The  colony  was  kept 
constantly  in  touch  with  the  mother  country 
in  these  matters  by  the  constant  immigra- 
tion of  brick  masons  and  carpenters  who 
brought  with  them  the  new  traditions  estab- 
lished under  the  influence  of  Sir  Christopher 
Wren.  The  architectural  detail  of  the  south- 
ern houses  is  generally  richer  and  more  elab- 
orate than  in  New  England,  but  the  work  of 
the  north  is  usually  more  delicate  in  detail. 
There  is  many  a  porch  and  window  in  the 
country  towns  of  England  built  at  this  time 
which  the  American  familiar  with  our  colo- 
nial work  would,  if  he  should  see  a  photo- 
graph of  it,  easily  mistake 
for  work  in  Newport,  Ports- 
mouth or  Newburyport.  The 
style  in  England,  as  seen  in 
its  simpler  and  more  modest 
examples,  and  the  style  in 
the  colonies  at  this  time 
were  practically  identical,  al- 
though the  American  work 
was  somewhat  modified  by 
the  constant  use  of  wood. 
The  carpenters  here,  as  in 
England,  modified  the  classic 
proportions  to  suit  them  to 
the  lighter  and  more  easily 
worked  materials,  and  added 
many  a  naive  and  charm- 
ing bit  of  detail  not  to  be 
found  in  the  books.  Mantel- 
pieces and  interior  woodwork 
were  not  infrequently  made 
in  England  and  imported, 
even  as  late  as  in  the  Tayloe  house  in  Wash- 
ington, where  they  are  signed  and  dated: 
"'John  Goode,  London,  1803."  Asarulethe 
plan  of  the  colonial  houses  in  New  England 
varied  but  little.  There  was  still  the  cen- 
tral entrance  with  a  modest  staircase — hall 
and  rooms  on  either  side;  but  now  there 
were  often  four  rooms  on  a  floor  instead  of 
two,  and  there  was  an  L  behind  containing 
the  kitchen.  In  the  South  the  kitchen  was 
generally  in  a  separate  building,  connected 
to  the  main  house  by  a  gallery,  and  on  the 
opposite  side  there  were  other  rooms  with  a 
similar  gallery,  making  a  symmetrical  com- 
position. The  buildings  for  the  servants' 


quarters  were  placed  separately,  the  whole 
often  forming  a  group  of  modest  dignity  and 
picturesqueness,  as  at  Mount  Vernon,  or  at 
Westover  (1737),  Virginia.  The  churches 
were  generally  plain  rectangular  structures, 
often  very  pleasantly  treated  interiorly  with 
columns  and  paneled  pews  and  pulpits.  The 
exteriors  generally  were  of  little  architec- 
tural interest,  except  for  the  spires,  which 
were  designed  in  the  manner  of  Wren's 
spires,  but  with  more  slenderness  of  propor- 
tion and  delicacy  of  detail,  as  the  spires 
were  carried  out  in  wood  even  when  the 
body  of  the  church  was  of  brick  or  stone, 
which  frequently  happened.  One  of  the 


HOME    OF    WASHINGTON,    MT.    VERNON,    VIRGINIA. 


most  attractive  churches  is  Christ  Church, 
Philadelphia  (1727-1735).  The  few  public 
buildings  of  the  time  partook  of  the  same 
general  character.  By  far  the  most  interest- 
ing of  this  class  is  Independence  Hall,  Phil- 
adelphia. All  these  buildings  were  the  work 
of  simple  craftsmen,  not  of  architects  in  the 
modern  sense,  although,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Philadelphia  church  just  mentioned,  the  gen- 
eral design  was  occasionally  the  work  of  an 
amateur. 

This  simple  but  dignified  style  continued 
without  much  change  until  the  opening  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  and  in  country  places 
lingered  until  about  1830.  But  the  tend- 


230 


ARCHITECTURE: 


INDEPENDENCE    HALL,    PHILADELPHIA,    AS    IT   LOOKS    TO-DAY. 


ency  of  taste  at  the  time,  here  as'  in 
England,  was  toward  vulgarity.  The  crafts- 
men lost  their  ancient  cunning,  and  with 
few  exceptions  the  now  independent  nation 
lacked  the  advantage  of  educated  architects 
whose  trained  knowledge  might  take  the 
place  of  the  traditional  craftsman's  skill, 
which  had  been  lost.  A  few  exceptions, 
however,  there  were.  In  Boston  there  was 
Thomas  Bulfinch,  the  most  noteworthy  ex- 
ample of  whose  many  public  and  private 
buildings  is  the  State  House  at  Boston 
(1795).  Thomas  Jefferson,  after  the  man- 
ner of  the  educated  dilletanti  in  England, 
designed  among  other  things  the  University 
of  Virginia  at  Charlotteville  (1817).  The 
Frenchman  Mangin  designed  the  city  hall  of 
New  York  (1803-1812).  The  original  cap- 
itol  at  Washington,  of  which  portions  are 
incorporated  in  the  present  building,  was 
the  work  of  Thornton,  Mallet,  Bulfinch  and 
Latrobe  (1793-1830).  About  1830  to  1840 
there  began  to  appear  the  reflex  of  the  Greek 
and  Gothic  revivals  of  England.  The  two 
movements  ran  side  by  side,  but  the  Greek 
revival  somewhat  preceded  and  utterly  de- 
stroyed what  remnant  there  was  of  the 
colonial  traditions.  The  carpenters  now 
furnished  themselves  with  Greek  pattern 
books.  They  lost  utterly  their  traditional 
knowledge,  and  reproduced  in  the  interiors 
and  exteriors  of  their  wooden  houses  the 


utterly  inappropriate  Greek 
detail.  Clumsy  porticos  of 
hollow  wooden  columns  hav- 
ing the  heavy  stone  propor- 
tions of  the  Greek  orders 
stood  out  in  'front  of  dwell- 
ing, church  and  town  hall 
alike.  If  the  style  was  ab- 
surd in  England,  it  was 
doubly  so  here  where  the 
material  was  wood.  At  this 
time,  however,  some  digni- 
fied buildings  in  the  Greek 
manner  were  built  of  gran- 
ite, as  the  Treasury  Building 
in  Washington,  and  the  Cus- 
tom House  in  Boston,  both 
by  Ammi  B.  Young;  the  Cus- 
tom Houses  of  New  York, 
and  later  Girard  College, 
Philadelphia  by  Mr.  Thos.  U.  Walter.  These 
buildings  were  correct  in  detail,  and  dignified 
in  appearance,  and  though  not  entirely  suited 
to  their  purposes,  they  were  not  absurd  like 
their  wooden  imitations.  The  Gothic  re- 
vival at  this  time  fared  even  worse.  Its 
forms  were  so  little  understood,  that  it  was 
not  less  ugly  when  clumsily  and  ignorantly 
imitated  in  granite,  than  when  in  wood  its 
box  buttresses  hung  to  the  sides  of  the  thin 
framed  walls. 

Matters  went  from  bad  to  worse  until 
during  the  period  just  before  and  just  after 
the  war  the  general  level  of  public  taste  and 
the  level  of  architectural  attainment  fell 
lower  than  at  any  previous  period  in  any 
country.  Hardly  any  buildings  in  good 
taste  were  at  this  time  erected.  Machine- 
made  moldings  and  ornament,  jigsaw  pat- 
terns and  the  so-called  French  roof  came  in 
at  this  time,  while  shams  of  all  kinds  were 
rampant.  Imitation  marble,  imitation  stone, 
imitation  woods — graining,  etc. — were  every- 
where seen  with  very  little  of  genuine  work. 
A  few  buildings  of  respectable  design  were, 
however,  built  at  this  time,  notably  in  New 
York  and  Boston.  These  buildings  followed 
the  movement  of  architecture  in  England. 
English  architects  came  to  America,  and 
American  architects  went  to  the  mother 
country  for  training.  Trinity  Church  in 
New  York  (1843),  the  Central  Church  in 


RENAISSANCE  AND  MODERN. 


231 


Boston,    both  by    Mr.    R.    M.    Upjohn,    are 

among  the  best  examples  of  the  Gothic  re- 
vival in  this  country.     Grace  Church  (1840) 
and  St.    Patrick's  Cathedral  in   New  York, 
both   by    Renwick,  are  less   successful,  but 
still  far  better  than  most  of  the  buildings  of 
their  time.     The  State  Capitol  at  Hartford, 
Conn.  (1875-1878)  another  of    Mr.  Upjohn's 
buildings,  is  an   attempt  to 
apply  Gothic  forms  to  civic 
building  with   a  dome.      In 
one   or   two  instances    the 
Renaissance   work  of  Wren 
and  his  successors   was  re- 
vived  with    some    success. 
The    Capitol    at    Washing- 
ton, which    had    previously 
been  enlarged  by  the  addi- 
tion of  extensive  wings  with 
colonnaded     porticos,     was 
between  1858  and  1873  com- 
pleted as  to  its  main  mass 
by  the  addition  of  the  pres- 
ent dome,  another  work  of 
Mr.  Walter  which  imitates 
the  dome  of   St.   Paul's  in 
London.     Unfortunately, 
this    dome,   fine  as  it  is  in 
general    design,    is    only   a 
cast-iron  shell  imitating  the 
massive    forms     of     stone. 
The   graceful    spire   of  the 
Arlington  Street  Church  in 
Boston      (1862)     is     an    al- 
most  exact   copy  of  that  of   St.  Mattin's-in- 
the-Fields  in  London.     It  was  the  work  of 
Mr.    Alfred  Qreenough,   and  is  one  of   the 
most   successful    buildings   of    these   years. 
But  the  great  awakening  in  American  archi- 
tecture —  for,     although    achievement    still 
leaves  much  to  be  desired,  and  although  the 
bad  taste  of  the  previous  epoch  still  lingers 
with  us,  the  change  has  been  so  great  that 
it  may  really  be  called  a  great  awakening — 
this  came    especially  with   the   Philadelphia 
Exposition  of  1876,  which  opened  the  eyes 
of    the    average    American    to   the    artistic 
achievements  of  European  countries. 

At  the  same  time  the  work  of  Mr.  R.  M. 
Hunt  (1827-1895)  and  that  of  Mr.  H.  H. 
Richardson  (1838-1886),  both  trained  at  the 
School  of  Fine  Arts  in  Paris,  gave  a  new 


impulse  to  American  architecture.  Their 
work  and  that  of  their  pupils  has  had  a 
determining  influence  on  the  subsequent 
course  of  American  architecture.  Mr.  Hunt 
followed  largely  the  precedents  of  the  School 
of  Fine  Arts  in  Paris;  Mr.  Richardson  re- 
vived, with  a  freedom  of  treatment  distinctly 
personal,  the  Romanesque  work  of  South- 


THE  ADMINISTRATION   BUILDING  OF   THE  WORLD'S  COLUMBIAN    EXPOSITION. 
R.  M.  Hunt,  Architect. 


ern  France  and  Northern  Spain.  Mr. 
Hunt's  more  important  buildings  are  the 
Lenox  Library  (an  attempt  to  use  the 
French  Neo-Grec  style),  the  Tribune  Build- 
ing, and  the  Wm.  C.  Vanderbilt  house  in 
New  York,  the  great  country  mansion  of 
Biltmore,  near  Asheville,  N.  C.,  in  the  style 
of  Francis  I.,  and  largely  imitated  from  por- 
tions of  the  Chateau  of  Blois,  several  palatial 
residences  at  Newport,  R.  I.,  and  the 
Administration  Building  of  the  World's 
Fair  of  1893  in  Chicago.  Mr.  Richardson's 
most  noteworthy  works — all  of  them  in  his 
characteristic  and  vigorous  adaptation  of 
the  French  Romanesque  style — are  the 
"Brattle  Square"  Church  on  Common- 
wealth Avenue,  Boston  (1870),  with  its 
striking  campanile  whose  frieze  of  colossal 


232 


ARCHITECTURE: 


figures  is  by  the  French  sculptor  Bartholdi; 
the  court  house  at  Springfield,  Mass,  (begun 
in  1871);  Trinity  Church  in  Boston  (com- 
pleted 1875);  the  public  libraries  at  North 
Easton,  Woburn,  and  Quincy,  Mass. ;  the 


TRINITY    CHURCH    IN    BOSTON. 
H.  H.  Richardson,  Architect. 


town  hall  at  North  Easton,  Mass,  and  Sever 
Hall,  for  Harvard  University,  all  between 
1877  and  1880;  in  1883  the  Law  School  of 
Harvard  University  and  the  library  for  the 
University  of  Vermont  at  Burlington;  1884- 
86  the  court  house  and  jail  at  Pittsburg,  Pa. ; 
the  Marshall  Field  Building  (whole- 
sale) in  Chicago;  and  residences 
chiefly  in  Boston,  Chicago,  and 
Washington,  D.  C.,  besides  portions 
of  that  curious  but  impressive  con- 
glomerate of  several  styles  and  nu- 
merous architects,  the  State  Capitol  A 
at  Albany,  N.  Y. 

It  is  impossible  to  judge  clearly 
of  the  relative  value  of  work  in  the 
midst  of  which  we  live.  Still  more 
impossible  to  give  in  brief  compass 
an  adequate  account  of  present  tend- 
encies. We  have  now  going  on 
domestic  and  ecclesiastical  work  sim- 
ilar in  feeling  to  the  recent  Neo- 
Gothic  of  England  already  spoken 


of;  we  have  a  revival  of  our  own  colonial 
work    tinged    by  the   contemporary  revival 
of  Georgian   work    in    England.     We   have 
a  revival  of  the  High  Renaissance  of  Italy, 
often  handled  with  great  skill  and  freedom  to 
produce  most  monumental  effects, 
as  in  the  Public  Library  at  Boston, 
and  the  new  buildings  of  Colum- 
bia   University,     New    York,    by 
Messrs.  McKim,  Mead,  and  White, 
we    have    the   attempt    to  import 
the    latest    architectural    fashion 
from    Paris,  so  that  many  build- 
ings, especially  in  New  York,   re- 
call the  boulevards  of  the  French 
capital,    and  there  is    the  unique 
development  of    the   high    build- 
ing, due  to  the  invention  of  skel- 
eton   steel   construction    and   the 
elevator,  of  which  the  most  strik- 
ing examples   are    to    be   seen    in 
Chicago  and  New  York.  All  these 
movements — and  others — are  go- 
ing   on     at    this     moment.      One 
cannot,    therefore,    speak  of  con- 
sistent    development,     and     yet, 
on    the    whole,  American    architecture   has 
shown    such    marvelous    improvement    and 
so  much  of  promise  during  the  last  decade, 
that   attentive  interest   in    the    present    and 
hopefulness  with  regard  to  the  future  seem 
most  natural. 


THE    MARSHALL    FIELD    BUILDING,    CHICAGO. 
H.  H.  Richardson,  Architect. 


ttte 


and 

Utecoration, 


IN  THEIR.  HISTORY* 

PRINCIPLES 


EDITOR,' IN'  CHIEF 

EDMUND  BUCKLEY,A.M.,PK.D.,Universl<yofaiicago 

CONSULTING  EDITORS 

J.  M  .HOPPIN.1XD.,  Yale  University 

ALFRED  V.CHURCHILL,A.KL  ColumkiaUniwrrity 


Fulfy   Illustrated 


NATIONAL    ART    SOCIETY 

Chicago 


Copyright,  1907,  by  W.  E.  ERNST. 


DYING    GREEK    FROM    THK    TEMPLE    OF    jEGINA,    NOW    AT    MUNICH. 


Sculpture:     Greek  and   Roman. 


BY 


EDMUND  VON  MACH,  A.M.,  Ph.D. 

INSTRUCTOR   IN  THE  HISTORY   OF   GREEK  ART  IN  HARVARD   UNIVERSITY,    AND   IN   THE  HISTORY   OF   SCULPTURE 

IN   WELLESLEY    COLLEGE. 


PREFACE. 
More  people  turn  to  the  study  of 
Greek  art  now  than  probably  at 
any  other  time  in  the  history  of  the 
world;  and  those  who  know  Greek  art  love 
it  with  a  sincerity  and  enthusiasm  which 
cannot  be  equaled.  Tyros  will  often  ask 
how  it  is  that,  after  the  ruin  of  centuries,  a 
piece  of  genuine  Greek  workmanship  still 
exercises  a  vital  charm  far  beyond  its  mere 
archaeological  interest;  and  are  astonished  to 
learn  that  the  study  of  Greek  art,  far  from 
being  concerned  with  the  dead  past,  has  to 
do  with  the  most  vital  ambitions  and  aspira- 
tions of  the  human  heart,  which  the  Greeks 
were  the  first  to  understand  and  to  express 
in  their  sculpture. 

Mr.    Edward     Robinson,    probably     our 


greatest  and  certainly  the  most  sympathetic 
American  authority  on  the  subject,  last  year 
closed  his  course  of  lectures  in  Harvard 
University  with  these  words:  "Two  things 
ought  to  live  with  us  from  the  study  of  the 
history  of  Greek  art ;  one  is  the  reality  of 
idealism,  the  other  the  lesson  of  sincerity." 
No  statement  could  be  truer  than  this;  and 
in  writing  these  short  lectures  on  Greek  art 
the  author  has  never  once  lost  sight  of  these 
fundamental  truths.  Many  things  of  great 
importance  have  necessarily  been  omitted, 
others  have  been  barely  mentioned.  The 
selection  of  illustrations  has  been  very  diffi- 
cult, because  the  limits  of  the  lessons  did 
not  admit  of  many.  But  throughout,  the 
author  has  been  guided  by  his  love  for  the 
subject  and  his  desire  to  make  the  reader 
realize  in  Greek  art,  perhaps  more  fully  than 


235 


236 


SCULPTURE: 


ever  before,  the  reality  of  idealism,  the 
necessity  of  sincerity,  and  the  supremacy  of 
the  beautiful.  If  the  beautiful  is  properly 
understood,  it  includes  the  good,  and  is  the 
surest  guide  through  life.  It  is  leading  us 
on  a  pathway  ever  sunnier  as  we  proceed. 
It  ennobles  us  and  fits  our  souls  for  the  life 
to  come,  which,  as  all  people  in  spite  of 
many  varying  views  agree,  will  be  a  life  of 
beauty  if  life  at  all. 


THE   MYCENAEAN   AGE.(i) 
We  do  not  know  the  beginning  of 
Greek  civilization,  nor  its  date  of 
origin.      Generally  speaking,  any- 
thing before  650  B.  C.  is  said  to  belong  to 
Greek  prehistoric  times.     This  is  due  to  the 
fact    that  we   hardly  possess  any  authenti- 
cated written  records  before  this  date,  and 
that  about  this  time  a  new  impetus  seems  to 
have  been  given  to  Greek  civilization,  which 
then   quickly  developed  and  within   a  few 
centuries  reached  heights  far  beyond  those 
of  any  other  civilization,  and  to  some  extent 
not  equaled  even  by  our  own. 

Greek  civilization  as  we  now  understand  it 
is  not  a  sudden  or  independent  growth,  but  is 
builded  upon  an  earlier  and  very  flourishing 
period  of  royal  and  artistic  splendor  which 
had  come  to  an  end  by  the  Dorian  invasion 
at  about  1000  B.  C. ,  after  it  had  lasted  some 
five  or  six  centuries.  That  was  the  Myce- 
naean Age.  It  was  followed  by  an  "Age  of 
Darkness,"  until,  at  about  650  B.  C.,  the 
first  rays  of  that  Greek  civilization  shone 
forth  by  which  all  medieval  and  all  our 
modern  attainments  have  been  guided.  The 
archaeologist  may  successfully  endeavor  to 
lift  the  veil  from  a  past  even  more  remote 
than  the  early  period  referred  to,  but  we 
must  be  satisfied  to  begin  our  study  with  the 
so-called  Mycenaean  Age.  It  will  teach  us 
that  a  germ  of  high  artistic  feeling  was 
innate  in  the  Greek  people,  and  it  will  help 
us  to  understand,  at  least  in  part,  the  sur- 
prisingly rapid  development  of  art  in  Greece 
after  the  conditions  in  the  fifth  and  fourth 
centuries  before  Christ  had  become  favor- 
able to  its  growth. 

The    Mycenaean    Age    is   the    period   of 


which  Homer  sings,  the  age  of  the  proud 
king  Agamemnon,  and  the  fated  fall  of 
Troy.  Who  was  Homer,  and  when  did  he 
live?  This  question  has  moved  the  world 
ever  since  Wolf  at  the  end  of  the  last  cen- 
tury had  startled  it  by  "proving"  that  the 
famous  bard  was  merely  a  mythical  person- 
age. One  by  one  the  most  prominent 
scholars  felt  the  necessity  of  siding  with 
Wolf,  whose  proofs  seemed  to  be  conclusive, 
until  towards  the  end  of  our  century  there 
was  but  one  great  man  who  boldly  dared  to 
say  what  our  hearts  still  feel  when  we  read 
the  adventures  of  Odysseus  and  the  wrath 
of  Achilles:  "I  believe  in  Homer,  he  was  a 
man,  he  actually  has  lived,  and  what  he 
sings  is  substantially  true. ' '  This  one  great 
man  was  William  Gladstone,  the  famous 
premier  of  England,  equally  as  great  a  man 
of  thought  as  of  deeds  and  words.  And 
then,  to  confirm  this  view,  there  came 
Schliemann,  who  in  the  face  of  a  scornful 
world  of  letters  carried  out  the  dreams  of 
his  youth  and  dug  up  the  now  famous  golden 
treasures  of  Mycenae  and  Tiryns.  He  dis- 
covered those  magnificent  graves  of  which 
the  most  beautiful  may  have  been  built  for 
Agamemnon  himself,  and  laid  bare  the  ruins 
of  the  royal  palaces  surrounded  by  walls 
which  have  been  builded  for  eternity. 

These  walls  were  a  wonder  of  accomplish- 
ment, not  less  to  the  historic  Greeks  than  to 
us.  Solid  boulders,  weighing  at  times  as 
much  as  from  fifty  thousand  to  two  hundred 
thousand  pounds  each,  have  been  piled  to- 
gether without  any  regularity  and  by  means 
entirely  unknown  to  us  now.  The  later 
Greeks,  who  made  up  their  own  early  his- 
tory from  the  deductions  which  they  drew 
from  actual  remains,  believed  that  the  orig- 
inal inhabitants  of  the  country  had  been  a 
race  of  giants,  that  they  had  been  conquered 
by  their  own  Greek  ancestors,  and  then  as 
slaves  had  been  compelled  to  erect  these 
tremendous  walls.  The  name  of  these 
mythical  giants  in  the  Peloponnesos  was 
Cyclopes.  In  Athens,  where  similar  re- 
mains are  extant,  they  were  called  Pelas- 
gians,  and  elsewhere  again  Telchines.  In 
modern  phraseology  any  prehistoric  wall  in 
Greece  which  is  built  of  solid  boulders  in 
irregular  layers  is  called  a  Cyclopean  wall,. 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


237 


while  others  of  perhaps  the  same  antiquity, 
which,  however,  show  a  certain  attempt 
at  joining1  the  boulders  in  layers,  though 
the  blocks  are  neither  squared  nor  hewn, 
are  called  polygonal,  i.  e.,  many  cornered. 
Another  kind,  finally,  where  the  same  solid 
blocks  are  used  but  squared  and  joined  in 
regular  and  fairly  horizontal  layers,  are 
known  as  rectangular  walls  or  "ashlar" 
masonry.  The  style  of  such  imperishable 
masonry,  together  with  the  remains  of  like- 
wise indestructible  pottery,  are  the  surest 
guides  in  our  attempts  at  dating  early  re- 
mains which  have  been  or  may  be  exca- 
vated. The  discussion  of  the  majority  of 
these  early  remains  does  not  belong  to  the 
subject  in  hand  because  works  of  art  in 
them  are  few. 

Sculpture  in  stone  was  not  one  of  the 
accomplishments  of  these  people,  and  with 
one  exception  none  need  be  mentioned  here. 
The  most  famous  is  the  citadel  gate  of 
Mycenae,  where  the  lintel  is  surmounted  by 
a  triangular  design  in  heraldic  fashion. 
(See  the  cut,  p.  156.)  Two  lionesses  face  one 
another  agid  rest  their  forepaws  on  a  large 
and  architecturally  unique  base  of  a  column 
between  them,  which,  unlike  the  later  Greek 
columns,  tapers  downwards.  The  heads  of 
the  beasts  were  made  of  separate  blocks; 
they  are  lost  now,  but  the  holes  in  the  necks 
where  they  were  fastened  by  dowels  are  still 
to  be  seen.  The  conception  of  the  group 
is  spirited,  and  even  the  casual  observer  is 
struck  with  a  certain  reality  and  accuracy  of 
modeling  which  at  first  seems  little  com- 
patible with  an  early  date.  It  has  therefore 
been  suggested  that  this  work  can  hardly  be 
called  Greek,  but  must  have  been  executed 
by  foreign,  e.  g.,  Phoenician,  workmen.  It 
is  true  that  this  gate  of  the  lionesses  cannot 
be  exactly  equaled  anywhere  else  in  Greece 
(although  similar  designs  appear  on  Greek 
engraved  gems),  and  that  the  column  has  a 
distinctly  foreign  shape.  On  the  other  hand, 
we  find  in  this  "coat  of  arms,"  if  I  may  call 
it  such,  which  the  king  of  Mycenae  had  placed 
over  his  gate,  so  much  of  the  ideal  realism 
prominent  in  later  Greek  art  and  altogether 
lacking  in  the  east  that  we  may  well  credit 
a  Greek  sculptor  with  the  execution  of  the 
work. 


The  whole  question  of  eastern,  i.  e., 
chiefly  Phoenician,  influence  upon  the  early 
Greeks  is  still  under  dispute.  Recent  exca- 
vations in  Crete  by  the  British  School  of 
Archaeology  may  help  us  to  solve  it.  Ac- 
cording to  the  preliminary  reports,  Mr. 
Evans  believes  he  has  excavated  there  the 
remains  of  an  early  "Mycenaean"  palace, 
and  he  has  found  in  it  some  written  court 
tablets  in  the  style  of  the  well-known 
Assyrian  tablets;  and,  what  is  of  especial 
interest  to  us,  large  fragments  of  a  fresco 
painting.  A  similar  one  had  already  been 
discovered  by  Dr.  Schliemann  in  Tiryns. 
The  fragility  of  the  material,  of  course, 
renders  the  preservation  of  wall  paintings 
very  difficult,  but  enough  is  already  known 
to  lead  us  to  the  acceptance  of  the  view  that 
paintings  in  the  Mycenaean  age  were  far  less 
rare  than  sculpture.  The  relation  of  the 
one  art  to  the  other  is  as  yet  rather  obscure, 
but  we  need  not  hesitate  to  side  with  those 
scholars  who  look  upon  painting  as  the  lead- 
ing- art. 

In  fact  the  relation  between  the  two  arts 
is  so  intimate  that,  as  soon  as  research  on 
painting  has  been  carried  a  little  further, 
their  separate  treatment  will  become  an 
anomaly. 

But  the  chief  artistic  accomplishment  of 
the  Mycenaean  age  as  far  as  we  now  know 
was  neither  sculpture  nor  painting,  but  the 
goldsmith's  art.  Diadems  and  brooches 
have  been  found,  pins,  cups,  disks  and 
various  ornaments  of  such  delicate  and 
superior  workmanship  that  no  modern 
jewelry  can  be  compared  with  them.  We 
stand  aghast  before  them,  and  when  we 
attempt  to  analyze  the  harmonious  feelings 
of  satisfaction  which  they  give  us,  we  can- 
not tell  whether  it  is  the  graceful  shape  of 
these  objects  or  the  masterful  moderation 
and  charm  of  their  design  which  excites  our 
greater  admiration.  With  all  the  splendor 
of  the  gold  there  is  the  repose  of  the  truly 
beautiful.  We  are  not  excited  with  the 
nervous  hilarity  of  outward  show,  nor  with 
the  desire  to  own  an  object  of  similar  mone- 
tary value,  but  we  feel  that  ennobling 
quietude  which  always  is  ours  when  we  may 
gaze  upon  beauty  unstained  by  sordid  pas- 
sion. 


238 


SCULPTURE: 


A 


RCHAIC   GREEK    SCULPTURE. 
(*) 


When  the  mist  of  prehistoric  un- 
certainty clears  away,  we  discern 
the  Greeks  of  later  times,  the  Greeks 
who  fought  the  Persians  and  built  the 
Parthenon,  firmly  settled.  They  were  di- 
vided into  several  tribes,  two  of  which 
(with  a  possible  subdivision)  are  of  impor- 
tance for  our  study.  The  Dorians  in  their 
mountain  seats  were  stalwart,  slow,  honest, 
and  conservative.  They  were  lovers  of  the 
grandeur  of  nature.  The  lonians  lived  on 
the  sea-coast.  They  were  gifted  and  versa- 
tile, like  the  lovely  surface  of  their  beauti- 
ful JEgean.  They  were  traders  and  fond  of 
money,  accumulating  much  wealth  and 
spending  it  lavishly  in  the  service  of  their 
Gods.  They  were  also  given  to  luxury,  and 
fond  of  gratifying  the  desires  of  the  flesh. 

The  most  brilliant  people  of  this  tribe 
were  the  Athenians.  Their  city  was  built 
where  the  towering  mountains  gently  stoop 
to  the  sea,  and  the  sea  in  numberless  gulfs 
is  hugging  the  land  and  bathing  it  with  a 
wealth  of  kisses.  To-day,  if  we  stand  on  the 
Acropolis,  the  citadel  height  of  Athens,  and 
turn  our  faces  to  the  south  and  west,  our 
hearts  throb  as  our  eyes  skim  the  intensely 
blue  waters.  The  mists  rolling  up  from  the 
heights  of  Salamis  and  ^Sgina  carry  our 
thoughts  on  the  light  wing  of  happy  imagina- 
tion wherever  the  moment  willeth ;  and  then 
we  turn  to  the  north  and  to  Mt.  Hymettus, 
which  shuts  off  our  view  in  the  east.  The 
steadiness  of  those  eternal  hills  and  the  dis- 
tant view  of  Mt.  Parnassos,  where  Apollo 
used  to  lead  the  chorus  of  the  Muses,  and 
the  realization  that  not  far  beyond  lies  Mt. 
Olympos,  where  the  happy  gods  lead  im- 
mortal lives,  all  tend  to  steady  our  desires, 
to  make  us  love  the  abiding,  and  to  hate  all 
change. 

No  wonder  that  the  Athenians,  living  in 
such  a  country,  were  called  as  no  other 
people  to  combine  the  best  ideas  and  ac- 
complishments of  both  the  Dorian  and  the 
Ionian  Greeks.  Their  tutelary  goddess  was 
Athena,  the  maiden,  the  warrior,  who  had 
sprung  full  armed  from  the  brow  of  the  god, 
her  father,  Zeus.  She  was  the  goddess  of 


art,  and  of  purity  of  intellect ;  the  goddess 
of  the  air,  of  that  crisp  clearness  of  percep- 
tion which  the  Greeks  themselves  believed 
they  owed  to  the  unequaled  bright  atmos- 
phere of  their  country.  It  is,  however,  of 
significance  that  the  Athenians  were  not 
the  first  to  smooth  the  way  for  art.  The 
lonians,  on  the  coast  of  Asia  Minor  and  on 
the  islands,  yes,  even  the  slow  Dorians  in 
the  Peloponnesos  and  thereabouts,  seem  to 
have  been  their  leaders.  There  are,  how- 
ever, so  many  factors  which  are  of  impor- 
tance in  the  rise  and  development  of  art 
that,,  in  order  fully  to  understand  the  ques- 
tion, the  reader  must  familiarize  himself 
with  the  early  history  of  Greece. 

The  most  successful  patrons  of  the  grow- 
ing arts  were  the  so-called  Tyrants.  Let 
us,  therefore,  at  once  dissociate  from  a 
"tyrant"  the  modern  idea  of  a  bloodthirsty 
and  gloomy  monarch.  A  tyrant  was  a  man 
who,  with  the  help  of  one  faction  of  the 
state,  had  succeeded  in  gathering  into  his 
own  hands  all  the  reins  of  government.  He 
often  was  a  liberal  man  of  high  moral  char- 
acter, untiringly  working  for  thf  good  of 
his  people,  whom  he  endeavored  to  im- 
prove, and  whose  city  he  often  embellished 
to  a  degree  that  without  him  would  have 
been  impossible. 

The  Greeks  were  naturally  religious,  and 
the  tyrants,  like  kings  and  princes  in  the  old 
world  to-day,  played  upon  these  instincts. 
It  was,  of  course,  impossible  for  them  to  lay 
claim  upon  any  "divine  right"  by  means 
of  which,  like  our  modern  kings,  they  might 
pretend  to  hold  sway  over  their  fellow  citi- 
zens; but  they  could  and  did  assert  that 
they  were  the  special  friends  of  the  gods 
whom  all  the  people  worshiped  and  feared. 
Temples  were  built  to  the  gods,  their  statues 
erected,  and  public  parks  and  gardens  were 
reserved  under  the  title  of  sacred  groves 
and  precincts.  The  city,  in  short,  was  left 
at  the  tyrant's  death  or  expulsion  far  more 
beautiful  than  he  had  found  it.  Yet  not 
only  more  beautiful,  but  also  vastly  stronger. 
The  tyrant  had  to  be  on  his  guard  always. 
He  built  citadels  and  city  walls,  trained  an 
army,  and  was  ever  ready  to  deal  a  blow  to 
his  foes.  Some  of  the  most  famous  tyrants 
of  antiquity  were  Periander  of  Corinth, 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


239 


Polykrates  of  Samos,  and  above  all  others 
Peisistratos  of  Athens,  who  railed  his  city 
from  560  to  527  B  C.  It  was  under  his  rule 
that  Athens  gathered  the  strength  which 
enabled  her  a  quarter  of  a  century  later  to 
withstand  the  attacks  of  the  numberless 
Persian  army  and  navy,  and  to  be  the  leader 
of  all  Greece,  as  well  on  the  field  of  battle 
as  in  literary  and  artistic  pursuits. 

It  is  most  interesting  to  pass  in  review  the 
numerous  pieces  of  archaic  sculpture  which 
recent  excavations  have  unearthed,  and  to 
watch  in  them  the  gradual  development 
which  finds  its  prime  in  the  Athenian 
studios  of  the  fifth  and  fourth  centuries  be- 
fore Christ.  Even  in  the  crudest  beginning 
we  notice  the  touch  of  sincerity,  the  love 
for  the  beautiful,  which  yet  the  untrained 
sculptor's  hand  refuses  to  catch  in  stone, 
though  the  master's  mind  has  already  dis- 
cerned it.  A  dainty  gracefulness  in  compo- 
sition, and  soft  and  flowing  lines  of  drapery 
shrouding  the  luxurious  bodies  of  a  pleasure- 
loving  people  appealed  to  the  lonians,  while 
the  Dorians  were  attracted  by  the  purity 
and  simple  grace  of  the  nude.  To  them 
there  was  nothing  more  beautiful  than  a 
muscular  youth  trained  in  the  hardships  of  a 
mountain  life  or  in  athletic  sports.  These 
seem  to  have  been  the  characteristics  of  the 
two  races,  but  as  art  advanced  the  one 
learned  of  the  other,  and  when  toward  the 
end  of  the  sixth  century  before  Christ 
Athens  appears  on  the  field  as  a  leader, 
she  has  already  learned  how  to  blend  the 
two  chief  accomplishments  of  the  rival 
schools. 

But  before  turning  to  the  works  which 
are  preserved  for  us  from  Athens,  we  must 
select  one  or  two  pieces  of  the  earlier 
schools. 

One  of  the  choicest  treasures  of  the  Na- 
tional Museum  in  the  Louvre  in  Paris  is  a 
relief  representing  on  one  side  Apollo  with 
the  Nymphs,  and  on  the  other  Hermes  with 
the  Graces.  And  yet  a  majority  of  visitors 
pass  it  by  without  even  a  casual  glance. 
They  do  not  know  that  here  we  can  see  the 
budding  twig  of  art  which  was  to  bear 
Athenian  sculpture  as  its  finest  fruit.  These 
reliefs  once  faced  the  entrance  to  a  sacred 
cave.  Apollo,  lyre  in  hand,  stands  near  the 


door.  His  pose  is  easy,  natural,  and  simple, 
as  only  a  pure  art  in  its  childhood  can  create. 
He  stops  and  turns,  for  a  maiden  is  approach- 
ing behind  him  to  crown  him  with  a  laurel 
wreath.  Every  line  of  her  body  tells  of  her 
eagerness,  but  reveals  at  the  same  time  also 
the  dignity  of  her  character.  13'he  is  a  lady, 
self-possessed,  but  "humanly  warm,  who,  in 
the  happiest  moment  of  her  life,  when  she 
may  crown  the  god,  does  not  allow  excited 
haste  to  disturb  the  contours  of  her  grace- 
ful form.  On  the  other  slab,  of  which  we 
present  an  illustration,  we  see  Hermes 
advancing.  In  cordial  greeting  he  extends 


HERMES    AND   A   GRACE.      PARIS. 


his  arm.  Frankness  and  worthy  self-respect 
are  shown  in  every  line  of  his  body ;  and  so 
well  has  the  artist  succeeded  that  we  should 
almost  forget  his  early  date,  if  we  were  not 
reminded  of  it  by  the  restrictions  under 
which  he  was  obliged  to  carve  the  legs  of  the 
god.  The  whole  pose  of  the  figure,  half  in 
front  and  half  in  profile,  is  a  difficult  one, 
and  the  more  we  study  it,  the  more  we 
realize  that  for  these  early  times  its  execu- 
tion is  next  to  marvelous.  No  stronger  con- 
trast could  be  found  than  is  shown  between 
the  Hermes  and  the  Grace  following  him. 
Kind-hearted  Hermes  is  generous,  ready  to 
embrace  the  world,  ready  to  come  to  whoso- 


240 


SCULPTURE: 


THE   SO-CALLED   APOLLO   OF    TENEA.       MUNICH. 

ever  will  receive  him;  his  companion  is 
modest  and  retiring,  the  true  goddess  of 
that  unspeakable  grace  whose  charm  is  like 
a  soothing  balm  for  troubled  souls,  coveted 
by  all,  but  won  by  none  but  virtuous  hearts 
in  patient  service  of  the  beautiful. 

Unfortunately  the  surface  of  the  relief  is 
badly  marred,  a  fact  which,  together  with 
the  archaic  scarcity  of  free  modes  of  expres- 
sion, renders  it  difficult  for  the  tyro  to  ap- 
preciate the  excellence  of  this  work.  The 
student,  however,  who  approaches  this  or 
any  other  archaic  piece  of  sculpture  with 
love  and  eagerness  will  soon  join  the  ranks 
of  those  who  find  recreation  and  joy  in  the 
contemplation  of  archaic  Greek  art. 


A 


RCHAIC    GREEK 

Continued.  (3) 


SCULPTURE 


The  next  figure  which  we  shall 
discuss  is  one  of  a  large  number  of 
similar  statues,  a  so-called  "Apollo. "  It  is 
the  statue  of  a  nude  youth  standing  erect 
and  with  his  left  foot  advanced.  The  great- 
est number  of  such  statues  used  to  be  found 
in  sanctuaries  of  Apollo;  they  were  there- 
fore believed  to  be  images  of  this  god. 
Later,  however,  similar  figures  were  discov- 
ered in  places  where  they  obviously  had 
served  as  grave  monuments.  Now  the  view 
has  found  almost  universal  acceptance  that 
the  early  sculptors  have  used  the  same  type 
to  represent  both  Apollo  and  any  other 
youthful  and  athletic  body. 

The  particular  "Apollo"  under  discussion 
was  found  in  1846  at  Tenea,  near  Corinth. 
It  is  one  of  the  best  preserved,  and  the  stu- 
dent who  views  it  in  the  Glyptothek  in 
Munich  will  be  pleased  to  know  that  there 
are  practically  no  restorations.  The  fig- 
leaf,  of  course,  is  a  modern  addition.  There 
is  in  this  world  nothing  more  divine  than 
the  human  body,  made  in  the  image  of  God, 
and  nothing  purer  than  its  representation  in 
early  Greek  art.  It  cannot  be  denied  that 
later  on  the  loveliness  of  the  female  form 
was  over-accentuated,  but  in  the  early  times 
of  which  we  are  now  speaking,  and  espe- 
cially in  the  representation  of  the  nude 
athlete,  the  purity  of  thought  is  unques- 
tioned. To  hide  one  part  of  such  a  godlike 
body  behind  a  leaf  (which  also  spoils  the 
rhythm  of  the  lines)  is  barbarous ;  it  is,  as  a 
great  man  has  said  with  more  force  than 
charitableness,  "the  nasty  invention  of  a 
nasty  mind. ' ' 

The  "Apollo"  of  Tenea  belongs  to  about 
525  B.  C. ,  and  although  it  shows  many  dis- 
tinctly archaic  traits  it  exhibits  some  ad- 
vances over  its  earlier  brethren.  We  cannot 
study  the  figure  and  look  into  its  smiling  yet 
seemingly  ridiculous  face  without  apprecia- 
tion for  the  loving  hand  of  the  sculptor 
whose  longing  to  represent  truly  what  he 
saw  was  far  beyond  his  skill.  The  anatomy 
of  the  body  is  well  understood,  tender  care 
is  bestowed  upon  the  complicated  knee 
joints,  and  the  elbows  with  their  beautiful 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


241 


dimples  remind  us  of  the  pleasure  we  felt 
the  last  time  we  saw  them  in  nature.  Even 
the  unnatural  smile  of  the  broad  mouth  is 
catching,  and  makes  us  feel  in  sympathy 
with  the  spirit  which  the  unknown  Greek 
sculptor  (alas,  what  was  his  name?)  breathed 
into  this  stone.  The  more  we  look  at  it  the 
more  entirely  we  cross  back  over  the  gulf  of 
time;  we  become  members  of  that  early 
civilization  and  we  admire  the  statue  as  the 
best  product  of  its  period.  Then,  one  of 
the  greatest  difficulties  with  which  the  early 
artist  had  to  contend  was  the  heaviness  of 
the  material  in  which  he  worked,  combined 
with  the  slimness  of  some  of  the  parts  of  the 
human  body  which  he  represented.  How 
was  it  possible  that  the  narrow  neck  in  stone 


excavations  on  the  Acropolis  of  Athens. 
But  before  we  turn  to  them  we  should  briefly 
look  at  some  of  the  many  pediment  figures, 
which  probably  are  earlier,  and  which  also 
have  been  found  on  the  Acropolis.  They 
do  not,  however,  all  belong  to  the  same 
period.  Some  seem  to  go  back  to  very 
early  times,  while  others  cannot  have  been 
executed  much  before  the  turn  of  the  cen- 
tury (500  B.  C.).  The  particular  group 
which  we  shall  now  examine  is  one  of  the 
best.  It  represents  Typhon,  a  giant  with 
three  bodies,  whose  extremities  end  in  twin- 
ing coils  of  snakes.  The  junction  of  the 
three  human  bodies  is  done  with  little 
verisimilitude.  It  is  decidedly  poor,  and 
lacks  the  charm  of  nai've  workmanship  which 


TYPHON,       ATHENS. 


could  support  the  weighty  head  as  perfectly 
as  the  vertebrae  and  muscles  do  in  nature? 
The  artist  took  his  refuge  in  artificial  means, 
strengthening  the  comparative  thinness  of 
the  neck  by  the  peculiar  hair  dress,  and  sup- 
porting the  arms  by  attaching  them  to  the 
sides.  Our  sculptor  was  bold,  and  dared 
what  before  him  none  had  done,  he  cut  the 
arms  entirely  loose  from  the  sides,  leaving 
only  a  thin  shaft  between  the  hands  and  the 
body.  In  order  fully  to  appreciate  this  in- 
novation, we  must  cast  a  comparing  glance 
upon  say  the  "Apollo"  of  Thera,  or  that  of 
Orchomenos,  pictures  of  which  may  be 
found  in  complete  histories. 

The  best  counterparts  to  these  nude  stand- 
ing male  figures  are  the  draped  female  fig- 
ures which  have  been  found  during  recent 


belongs  to  the  infancy  of  art;  but  on  the 
other  hand  a  certain  vivacity  of  conception 
makes  us  feel  in  sympathy  with  the  compo- 
sition. The  three  heads  are  bearded  and 
all  of  about  the  same  age,  but  in  every  other 
respect  they  differ  each  from  the  other. 
The  artist  has  taken  the  greatest  care,  it 
seems,  to  enhance  the  difference  by  making 
them  look  in  different  directions.  The  eyes 
are  wide  open,  the  mouths  show  heavy 
breathing,  and  everything  is  done  to  make 
the  Typhon  appear  awe-inspiring.  The 
irony  of  fate,  however,  has  played  upon  the 
inexperience  of  the  sculptor,  and  to  look  at 
the  Typhon  makes  us  rather  smile  than  run 
away  from  him  in  fear,  and  this  in  spite  of 
the  most  remarkable  use  of  coloring.  This 
pediment  group  is  one  of  the  few  pieces  of 


242 


SCULPTURE: 


ancient  sculpture  which  have  preserved  to 
our  day  large  traces  of  paint.  The  hair  and 
beards  are  blue,  the  eyes  green,  the  bodies 
brown. 

This  brings  us  face  to  face  with  the  mooted 
question,  Was  ancient  sculpture  colored? 
To  the  modern  mind,  with  its  love  for  glar- 
ing whiteness  and  the  sentimental  dislike 
against  staining  the  surface  of  the  expensive 
Carrara  marble,  painted  sculpture  often 
seems  to  be  a  sign  of  barbarism.  We  must, 


ARCHAIC    FEMALE    OF    THE    IONIAN    TYPE. 

however,  remember  that  the  Greeks  began 
to  use  marble  for  sculpture  chiefly  because 
they  had  an  unlimited  supply  of  it,  and, 
that  in  Greece  the  sun  shines  far  more  glar- 
ingly than  it  'does  with  us.  The  subject 
cannot  be  fully  discussed  here,  and  the 
statement  may  therefore  suffice  that  the  best 
authorities  of  the  day  believe  that  Greek 
sculpture  without  exception  was  colored — to 
what  extent  the  present  state  of  our  knowl- 
edge will  not  allow  us  to  decide.  Works  in 
poor  material  like  the  Typhon,  which  was  of 


soft  limestone  from  the  Peiraeos,  near 
Athens,  would  be  entirely  covered  with 
paint,  while  in  other  works  which  were 
wrought  in  marble  the  artist  probably  suited 
his  own  taste.  We  are  even  told  that  Praxi- 
teles, one  of  the  greatest  Greek  sculptors, 
deemed  those  of  his  works  best  which  had 
been  painted  by  the  famous  artist  Nikias. 
Some  modern  sculptors  have  also  been  very 
successful  recently  in  giving  a  judicious 
application  of  color  to  their  works.  The 
Museum  of  Fine  Arts  in  Boston,  for  in- 
stance, owns  such  a  beautiful  female  head, 
the  Linda,  by  Mr.  Herbert  Adams.  In 
view  of  this  superb  beauty  the  charge  of 
barbarism  falls;  and  scholars  are  now  en- 
deavoring, by  means  of  actual  remains  and 
literary  evidence,  to  solve  the  question — not 
was  Greek  sculpture  colored,  but  to  what 
extent  and  in  what  way  was  the  color  applied? 

Some  of  the  most  interesting  facts  touch- 
ing this  question  are  gathered  from  the 
draped  female  figures  from  the  Acropolis 
already  mentioned,  of  which  we  now  shall 
select  three  for  discussion.  The  subject  of 
these  figures  is  unknown.  They  are  hardly 
statues  of  Athena,  and  the  view  that  they 
ma)7  represent  priestesses  of  the  goddess  has 
gained  ground.  Similar  as  they  are,  they 
are  not  all  alike;  some  are  very  ancient,  and 
show  the  meagerness  and  lack  of  variety  in 
the  forms  over  which  early  sculptors  had 
command.  Others  reveal  an  almost  com- 
plete mastery  of  technical  difficulties  to- 
gether with  an  obviously  voluntary  adherence 
to  archaic  forms,  while  still  others  are  the 
most  eloquent  witnesses  for  the  fact  that 
Ionian  and  Dorian  art  had  begun  to  blend 
in  Athens. 

One  of  the  most  characteristic  figures  of 
this  group  is  depicted  in  our  illustration. 
Here  the  Ionic  love  for  prettiness  is  carried 
to  excess.  Harsh  angles  are  everywhere 
avoided,  and  no  vigorous  curves  occur. 
The  result  is  an  insipid  face  with  a  fairly 
meaningless  expression,  largely  due  to  the 
weak  and  parallel  curves  of  the  lips,  and  the 
eyes,  which  are  daintily  slanting  inwards. 
In  Greek  art  we  are  accustomed  to  see  some- 
thing straightforward,  and  its  absence  here 
is  sorely  felt.  But  with  this  one  exception 
our  figure,  battered  as  it  is,  with  legs  and 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


243 


ARCHAIC   FEMALE   OF   THE   DORIC   TYPE. 

arms  broken  off,  is  nobly  conceived.  We 
can  well  imagine  how  the  country  folk  and 
citizens  of  Athens  watched  this  priestess  as 
in  measured  step  she  advanced  to  the  sanctu- 
ary of  her  goddess.  Our  lady  is  graceful, 
and  has  an  air  of  distinction,  while  the  exe- 
cution of  her  statue,  conventional  if  you  will, 
has  all  the  charm  which  only  the  genius  of 
the  master  in  art  can  give  to  stone. 

Her  sister,  to  whose  picture  we  will  now 
give  a  hasty  glance,  is  very  different.  In 
her  statue  all  the  elaborate  daintiness  of  the 
Ionian  taste  has  vanished  before  the  straight- 
forwardness of  Doric  purity.  Finally,  our 
third  illustration  shows  a  successful  mixture 
of  the  two  opposed  types.  A  careful  com- 
parison of  these  three  statues,  with  the 
purpose  to  read  in  them  the  master's  mind 
and  what  he  wanted  to  express,  will  teach 
the  student  more  of  Greek  art  than  a  wordy 
description.  "Read,  read  much,  read  ever- 
more" was  the  advice  of  a  great  Greek 
scholar  to  all  who  wanted  to  learn  Greek. 
"Open  your  eyes,  study  the  statues,  look  at 
the  human  form,  think  and  look  at  the 
statues  again"  is  the  precept  for  those  who 
would  learn  to  know  Greek  art. 


7| — ^GINA    AND    OLYMPIA.(4) 

/  I  In  492  and  490  B.  C.  the  Per- 

•*•  ^  ^  sians  made  their  first  onslaught 
upon  Greek  liberty;  they  were 
unsuccessful,  thanks  to  the  kindness  of  Prov- 
idence and  the  daring  patriotism  of  the 
Greeks 

In  485  B.  C.,  Xerxes  succeeded  to  the 
throne  of  the  vast  Persian  Empire,  and  in 
480  he  invested  Greece  with  numberless 
hordes  on  land  and  sea.  When  the  bar- 
barians fled  and  the  Athenians  re-entered 
their  city,  they  found  it  a  heap  of  ruins,  but 
at  once  the  rebuilding  was  begun.  "Let  us 
build  the  Acropolis  on  a  grander  scale, 
worthier  of  the  gods  who  have  saved  us!" 
The  half-burned  buildings  are  torn  down; 
the  ground  is  leveled.  Broken  figures  or 
otherwise  damaged  statues  are  used  to  fill 
in  with;  and  there  the  statues  have  lain  un- 
disturbed for  two  millennia  and  more,  kindly 
preserved  by  mother  earth,  until  in  the 
recent  eighties  we  excavated  them. 

Several  of  these  statues  we  have  discussed 
above,  and  all  of  them  are  preserved  now  in 


ARCHAIC    FEMALE    OF    THE    MIXED    TYPE 


244 


SCULPTURE: 


the  Acropolis  Museum  in  Athens.  But  let 
us  look  forward,  and  not  backward.  An 
architectural  and  artistic  period  of  unequaled 
vigor  began.  All  at  once  Greek  artists  were 
able  to  throw  off  the  trammels  of  archaic 
shortcomings :  an  ever  vivid  incentive  to  us 
all  to  leave  behind  the  narrow  ways  of  tradi- 
tion and  to  push  forward  with  love  for  God 
and  beauty,  for  enlightenment  and  perfec- 
tion. 

Only  from  thirty  to  forty  years  lie  between 
the  end  of  the  archaic  period  and  the  dawn 
of  Athenian  perfection  in  art,  and  this 
period  of  forty  years  was  itself  rich  in  ac- 
complishments. Nowhere,  perhaps,  is  a 
selection  more  difficult,  for  in  every  work 
we  can  point  out  a  trait  which  was  the  foun- 
dation for  later  perfection. 

We  shall  discuss  in  this  chapter  the  tem- 
ple sculptures  of  ^Egina  and  Olympia. 

It  is  not  known  just  when  the  great  tem- 
ple of  ^Egina  was  built,  nor  to  what  deity; 
it  may  have  been  to  Athena  or  perhaps  to 
Zeus.  The  temple  must  have  been  built  be- 
fore JEgina.  lost  her  supremacy  to  Athens, 
soon  after  the  Persian  wars  The  pedi- 
ments were  richly  decorated  with  sculpture. 
When  the  building  collapsed  they  fell.  They 
were  excavated  early  in  our  century  and 
sold  to  Louis  of  Bavaria,  who  had  them  re- 
moved to  Munich  and  restored  by  the  great 
Danish  sculptor  Thorwaldsen.  Their  res- 
toration is  masterfully  done,  and  though  the 
connoisseur  regrets  the  difficulty  he  has  in 
distinguishing  the  antique  from  the  restora- 
tion, the  novice  will  find  relief  in  looking  at 
entire  figures. 

The  style  is  very  much  the  same  in  all 
these  figures,  with  the  exception  that  the 
sculptor  of  the  east  pediment  showed 
greater  power  and  knowledge.  Battle 
scenes  were  represented  on  both  pediments. 
Athena  in  the  middle,  at  her  feet  a  dying 
warrior,  friends  on  one  side  to  save  him, 
foes  on  the  other  to  contend  for  his  body, 
while  in  both  corners,  the  farthest  removed 
from  the  struggle,  the  wounded 

"Consent  to  death,  but  conquer  agony" 

to  use  the  words  of  Lord  Byron's  famous 
description  of  the  "Dying  Gaul." 

Our  illustration  on  p.  235  shows  the  best  of 


them.  The  courageous  fighter  is  wounded. 
Already  he  has  lain  still  on  his  back,  but  now 
the  hour  to  die  has  come,  and  once  more  his 
indomitable  will  controls  the  weakening 
body;  with  his  left  still  in  the  shield  he 
raises  himself.  We  watch  him,  and  know 
that  it  cannot  be  to  get  up,  but  to  collapse 
never  to  rise  again.  Never  more  will  he 
wield  the  beloved  sword  which  the  dying 
hand  still  clutches  with  the  fervor  of  better 
days. 

In  the  selection  of  this  moment  for  repre- 
sentation the  artist  has  shown  his  genius,  in 
the  execution  he  has  given  proof  of  his  skill. 
The  double  twist  of  the  body,  presenting  in 
different  planes  the  breast  and  the  abdomen, 
may  well  be  the  envy  of  modern  sculptors. 
The  Greek  artist  has  solved  the  problem 
with  the  ease  of  mastery.  The  result  is  that 
our  enjoyment  is  complete;  it  is  not  broken 
by  the  displeasure  which  we  invariably  feel 
when,  in  viewing  a  work  of  art,  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  difficulty  of  the  task  surpasses 
the  sentiment  of  harmonious  grace.  The 
head  is  far  behind  the  beauty  of  the  body; 
its  lines  are  good,  and  it  harmonizes  with 
the  whole,  but  we  who  know  that  the  soul  is 
best  expressed  by  the  face  look  in  vain  for 
psychical  expression  in  the  countenance. 
The  early  Greeks  were  weak  in  this  point, 
and  we  shall  see  that  it  took  them  many 
more  years  before  they  mastered  it.  With 
them,  it  seems,  the  face  was  nothing  but  one 
of  the  many  parts  of  the  body ;  the  body  as 
a  whole  was  to  express  the  artist's  idea,  and 
no  special  attention  was  paid  to  the  features. 

It  would  exceed  the  compass  of  these  les- 
sons if  we  were  to  discuss  any  more  of  the 
JEgina.  figures.  The  reader,  however,  is 
urged  to  look  at  them  either  in  the  nearest 
museum  or  in  photographs,  where  he  will 
find  them  in  the  order  in  which  they  were 
placed  in  the  pediments.  And  there  he  will 
at  once  be  struck  by  the  lack  of  artistic 
unity  and  a  certain  poverty  in  grouping. 
Each  figure  is  thought  out  in  itself,  is  com- 
plete in  itself,  and  has  no  need  of  the  ac- 
companying figures  to  explain  it.  This 
fault  is  natural  for  an  early  stage  of  art,  and 
always  disappears  the  nearer  the  art  reaches 
perfection. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  grouping,  the 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


245 


pediment  sculptures  from  the  great  temple 
of  Zeus  at  Olympia,  which  was  built  about 
470  B.  C.,  are  much  better,  while  they  are 
inferior  in  respect  to  line  composition.  In 
every  other  respect  the  advance  of  the 
Olympian  sculptures  over  the  Angina  figures 
is  indescribable.  The  ^Eginetan  sculptor  has 
given  us  finely  conceived  and  executed 
pictures  of  human  life;  the  Olympian  artists 
the  living  bodies  themselves.  There  we 
have  the  old  man  who  thoughtfully  presses 
his  cheek  to  his  hand  and  with  evil  fore- 
boding has  watched  the  preparation  for  the 
chariot  race ;  here  the  divine  head  of  Apollo, 
who  has  arrived  at  the  fight  between  Cen- 
taurs and  Lapiths;  and  here  again  the 
fierce  struggle  between  the  brute,  half  horse, 
half  man,  but  altogether  beast,  and  the 
lovable  woman  with  the  divine,  quiet  face. 
With  indecorous  zeal  he  touches  her  breast, 
and,  though  he  be  but  stone,  we  fain  would 
rush  upon  him,  deal  him  avenging  blows, 
and  win  the  gratitude  of  our  princess. 

The  proverb  says,  "See  Naples  and  die," 
and  we  who  know  the  Olympian  sculptures 
proclaim,  "Know  them  and  love  them  for- 
ever. ' '  To  love  a  body  does  not  mean  to  be 
blind  to  his  faults ;  the  Olympian  figures  are 
not  all  perfect,  but  where  so  many  points  of 
excellence  must  be  passed  in  silence  the 
reader  will  not  call  it  prejudice  if  we  omit  to 
call  his  attention  to  any  specific  defects. 
Beauty  is  so  apparent,  sincerity  and  honest 
skill  so  obvious,  that  we  pardon  those  short- 
comings which  are  due  partly  to  the  early 
stage  of  art  and  the  lack  of  experience,  and 
partly  to  the  absence  of  any  pattern  by 
which  to  be  guided  in  the  design  of  the 
work. 


T 


HE    SO-CALLED    TRANSITION- 
AL  PERIOD.  (5) 


While  these  two  temples  were 
erected  and  decorated  in  honor 
of  the  power  and  love  of  the  gods,  active 
schools  of  sculptors  were  flourishing  in 
Athens  and  elsewhere.  Not  much  is  left  of 
their  work,  and  not  even  the  names  of  all 
the  artists  are  known.  Kretios,  Nesiotes 
and  Myron  were  some  of  the  most  prom- 


inent, and  we  are  fortunate  enough  to  pos- 
sess Roman  copies  of  some  famous  statues 
by  them.  A  copy,  however,  be  it  ever  so 
good,  fails  to  convey  the  master's  spirit. 
Copies  of  Greek  sculpture  can  give  us  an 
idea  of  their  originals,  only  if  we  are  ac- 
quainted with  the  Greek  spirit  of  art.  Such 
an  acquaintance  is  the  result  of  years  of 
study  and  love,  not  only  for  Greek  sculpture 
and  letters  and  philosophy,  but  for  its 
humanity  and  life.  The  beginner  may  find 
it  difficult,  therefore,  to  form  a  just  opinion 


LAPITH   AND   CENTAUR.      OLYMPIA. 


of  a  Greek  master,  if  all  he  has  to  go  by  are 
Roman  and,  at  that,  often  inferior  copies. 
The  execution  in  all  such  instances  is  poor, 
but  the  nobility  of  the  conception  has  often 
been  saved.  This  is  the  case  with  the 
statues  of  Harmodios  and  Aristogeiton,  by 
Kretios  and  Nesiotes. 

Harmodios  and  Aristogeiton  were  friends, 
and  when  one  was  offended  by  the  sons  of 
Peisistratos,  who  ruled  Athens  after  their 
father's  death,  the  other  espoused  his  cause. 
The  tyrant  Hipparchos  was  killed,  and,  in 
the  uprising  which  followed,  his  brother 


246 


SCULPTURE: 


ARISTOGEITON    AND    HARMODIOS.        NAPLES. 


Hippias  eventually  had  to  leave  the  city. 
Athens  was  free ;  the  people  were  sovereign. 
They  were  by  this  time  well  able  to  care  for 
themselves,  and,  forgetting  that  it  was  per- 
sonal spite  and  hatred  which  had  actuated 
the  Tyrannicides,  they  saw  in  them  the 
vindicators  of  their  freedom,  and  ordered 
their  statues  erected  by  Antenor,  a  famous 
sculptor.  This  was  soon  after  510  B.  C. 
The  statues  were  considered  very  beautiful, 
and  when  Xerxes  entered  Athens  in  480  he 
took  such  delight  in  them  that  he  carried 
them  away  with  him  to  Persia,  where  they 
remained  until  near  the  end  of  the  next  cen- 
tury, when  they  were  returned  to  Athens. 
In  the  meantime,  however,  the  Athenians 
could  not  bear  to  be  without  their  "Tyran- 
nicides, ' '  and  had  Kretios  and  Nesiotes  make 
two  new  statues  of  the  heroes.  It  is  of  these 
statues  that  Professor  Friederich  recognized 
two  Roman  copies  in  the  museum  at  Naples 
some  fifty  years  ago.  Before  they  were 
recognized  the  statues  had  been  separated, 
they  were  broken  and  had  been  restored,  as 
has  been  the  case  with  all  the  statues  in 
Italian  museums. 

There  is  much  to  be  said  in  favor  of  such 


restoring,  and  the  average  visitor  to  the 
museums  probably  prefers  to  look  upon 
entire  men  and  women;  but  he  ought  not  to 
forget  that  he  is  no  longer  looking  at  a  piece 
of  genuine  Greek  workmanship.  The  re- 
storer has  often  taken  liberties.  He  had  not 
much  to  guide  him;  for  when,  for  instance, 
as  in  the  present  case,  both  arms  and  one 
leg  of  the  Harmodios  statue  were  gone,  how 
could  he  know  how  the  ancient  master  had 
placed  them?  We  are  more  fortunate.  Sci- 
ence has  advanced.  Coins,  vases,  bronzes 
and  literary  descriptions  are  studied  and 
arranged,  and  they  have  taught  us  that  in 
this  case,  for  instance,  the  left  hand  of  Har- 
modios held  a  scabbard,  and  that  the  right 
arm  was  decidedly  bent  over  the  head.  The 
hand  held  a  sword,  and  the  arm  was  just 
ready  to  deal  the  blow. 

Let  us  think  of  the  statue  in  this  way :  a 
youth  is  rushing  upon  the  tyrant  who  has 
offended  his  honor;  his  step  is  quick  and 
impetuous,  and  the  muscles,  ever  ready  in 
an  active  body,  have  responded  to  the  call  of 
the  emotions.  Frankness  is  seen  in  the  face, 
for  he  holds  the  mistaken  view  which  some 
of  us  to-dav  still  share,  that  the  means  by 
which  wrongs  can  be  righted  are  not  subject 
to  moral  laws.  There  is  even  a  touch  of 
sublime  honesty  in  his  figure  as  he  moves  on 
side  by  side  with  his  older  friend.  Aris- 
togeiton  too  is  full  of  firm  resolve,  but  with 
him  we  almost  feel  the  lack  of  enthusiasm. 
His  maturer  thoughts  have  given  him  a 
steadier  view  of  life,  and  though  he  too 
seems  to  be  hurrying  past  us  on  his  awful 
errand,  his  step  is  less  quick,  less  springy, 
but  long  and  fairly  halting,  and  appears  to 
tell  us  that  he  at  least  is  fully  aware  of  the 
fearfulness  of  his  purpose.  Nevertheless 
hatred  and  insulted  pride  push  him.  on  with 
the  indomitable  will  power  which  they  are 
wont  to  instil  into  their  victims.  The  head 
does  not  belong  to  this  statue;  it  is  antique, 
but  of  a  period  which  was  more  than  a  cen- 
tury later  than  the  age  of  the  Tyrannicides. 
The  restorer  of  the  statues  saved  himself  the 
trouble  of  making  a  new  head,  and  cared 
little  that  head  and  torso  did  not  belong 
together. 

A  younger  contemporary  of  Kretios  and 
Nesiotes  was  Hyron,  who  enjoyed  a  great 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


247 


reputation  in  antiquity.  Our  illustration 
shows  a  Roman  copy  of  his  "Discus- 
thrower."  (See  cut,  p.  21.)  In  this  statue 
we  can  well  appreciate  one  of  the  choicest 
virtues  of  Myron's  art,  which  was  second  to 
none  in  catching  momentary  poses  preceded 
and  followed  by  rapid  motion.  The  athlete 
has  taken  his  stand,  quickly  he  has  bent 
over  as  we  see  him  now,  and  in  an  instant, 
with  every  muscle  in  play,  he  will  straighten 
again  and  throw  the  disk  to  the  goal.  The 
rhythm  of  the  statue,  as  seen  in  the  copy,  is 
spoiled  by  the  support  which  the  heavy 
marble  necessitated.  The  original  was  of 
bronze,  and  from  the  marble  we  can  hardly 
form  even  an  idea  of  the  swiftness  of  the 
athlete  easily  posed  by  the  hand  of  Myron. 

Another  of  Myron's  great  accomplishments 
was  his  moderation ;  he  never  went  to  ex- 
cess. Look  at  the  stooping  athlete,  and  see 
how  much  elasticity  is  gained  by  the  mod- 
erate stoop.  The  youth  could  well  turn  a 
little  more  to  the  right,  he  might  bend 
slightly  more  in  his  knees,  or  raise  his  arm 
still  higher,  and  perhaps  might  gain  thereby 
in  apparent  strength;  he  would,  however, 
lose  his  greatest  charm,  the  charm  of  re- 
served force.  We  may  do  a  thing  ever  so 
well,  but  if  we  show  that  we  have  come  to 
the  end  of  our  resources  the  charm  of  per- 
fection is  gone.  Those  people  exercise  the 
greatest  influence  in  life  who,  whatever  they 
do,  do  it  gracefully  and  with  that  ease  which 
is  the  surest  promise  of  still  greater  accom- 
plishments. 

The  same  two  characteristics  which  we 
have  noticed  in  the  "Discobolos"  can  be 
seen  in  the  Marsyas,  a  mythical  personage 
of  Asia  Minor.  Athena,  so  the  story  goes, 
had  invented  the  pipes  (flutes),  but  seeing 
her  inflated  cheeks  reflected  in  a  brook  near 
which  she  stood  playing  them,  she  had 
thrown  them  away.  Marsyas  stealthily  had 
crept  up  behind  her,  ready  to  seize  the 
instruments  and  with  the  intention  of  an- 
nouncing them  as  his  own  invention.  Just 
as  he  had  stooped  to  pick  them  up  Athena 
turned  in  wrath,  and 

"Like  a  man  who  has  seen  a  snake  and  then  jumpeth 
backwards." 

Marsyas  recoiled.  This  is  the  moment  rep- 
resented by  Myron.  But  here  again  the 


original  is  lost.  The  elastic  bronze  has  been 
translated  into  the  heavy  marble;  the 
obligatory  support  has  been  added,  and,  to 
cap  the  climax,  the  arms,  which  had  been 
lost,  have  been  wrongly  restored  with  casta- 
nets in  his  hands,  as  if  Marsyas  were  a  danc- 
ing faun. 

But,  in  spite  of  all  these  vicissitudes, 
enough  of  beauty  is  left.  We  know  that 
Myron  was  a  great  artist,  and  we  are  not 
astonished  to  learn  that  the  generation 
which  followed  upon  him  can  boast  to  have 


ARISTOGEITON.      NAPLES. 


given  to  Athens  the  greatest  artist  genius 
which  the  world  has  ever  possessed,  Pheidias. 


PHEIDIAS  (6) 
Pheidias  lived  more  than  two  mil- 
lennia ago,    and  yet,  if  to-day  we 
want  to   speak  of  the  highest  at- 
tainments  in   sculpture,    of    the    sublimest 
plastic  art,  we  speak  of  Pheidias.     His  name 
means  the  same  to  us  now  as  it  did  to  the 
ancients,  and  it  is  not  rash  to  prophesy  that 


248 


SCULPTURE: 


it  will  mean  the  same  as  long  as  ours  or  any 
other  civilization,  builded  on  Greek  attain- 
ments, shall  exist. 

It  would  be  as  foolish  to  attempt  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  genius  of  Pheidias  as  it  is  im- 
possible to  describe  the  designs  of  God. 
Pheidias  was  the  exponent  of  the  divine 
love  for  beauty,  moderation,  perfection.  In 
moments  of  inspiration  we  can  feel  the 
power  of  his  work;  it  purifies  and  uplifts  us; 
but  to  analyze  it  is  beyond  human  power. 

The  only  attempt,  therefore,  which  can  be 
made  in  these  lines  is  to  acquaint  the  reader 
with  Pheidias,  whom  he  will  love  and  ad- 
mire the  more  he  approaches  him  and  his 
rare  works.  Pheidias  was  an  Athenian ;  he 
seems  to  have  been  born  about  the  begin- 
ning of  the  fifth  century,  and  he  died  an  old 
man,  baldheaded,  somewhere  between  440 
and  430  B.  C.  Literary  references  with 
respect  to  his  life  are  very  scant  and  often 
uncertain.  Even  the  story  of  his  violent 
death,  which  the  authors  say  he  suffered  at 
the  hands  of  the  Athenians,  is  too  contra- 
dictory in  details  to  command  implicit  faith, 
however  well  attested  it  may  be  in  many 
respects.  Pheidias  was  an  intimate  friend 
of  the  great  Athenian  statesman  Perikles, 
and  when  Perikles  was  attacked  by  his  po- 
litical enemies  the  great  artist  had  to  suffer. 
He  was  accused  of  dishonesty  and  embez- 
zlement. He  was  condemned  by  the  excited 
assembly  of  the  people,  and  either  was  put 
to  death  or  went  into  exile.  People  are 
ever  ready  to  throw  mud  at  the  unstained. 

Some  of  his  first  works  were  a  group  of 
statues  made  from  the  spoils  of  the  Battle  of 
Marathon,  and  an  Athena  of  gold  and  ivory. 
These  precious  materials  were  his  favorites, 
and  no  divinity  did  he  love  so  well  to  repre- 
sent as  Athena  and  her  powerful  father 
Zeus.  Thus  the  Athenians  could  boast  of 
several  Athena  statues  by  his  hand.  There 
was  a  towering  statue  of  bronze  erected  on 
the  Acropolis.  Athena,  the  owner,  the 
patron  of  Athens,  the  savior  in  war,  and  the 
leader  in  art,  stood  here  on  her  citadel  look- 
ing out  over  her  land  and  visible  to  her 
beloved  people  from  afar,  as  they  returned 
over  the  patient  sea,  and,  after  rounding  the 
promontory  of  Sunium,  came  sailing  home 
to  Athens 


And  not  far  from  this  statue,  which  some- 
times is  known  by  the  mistaken  name  of 
"Athena  Promachos,"  the  Athenian  colo- 
nists of  Lemnos  had  erected,  by  the  hands 
of  Pheidias,  another  statue  of  the  virgin 
goddess  with  helmet  in  hand,  and  with  a 
"beautiful  blush  on  her  cheeks."  Both 
statues  are  gone;  no  sure  copies  are  left  of 
either,  but  the  inspiring  genius  of  Professor 
Furtwangler  in  Munich  has  shown  it  prob- 
able that  the  image  of  the  latter,  the 
Letnnian  Athena,  is  preserved  to  us  in  two 
statues  in  Dresden  and  a  magnificent  head 
in  Bologna.  Whether  by  Pheidias  or  one  of 
his  contemporaries,  the  statue  was  one  of  the 
sublimest  creations  of  art.  Tall  and  self- 
possessed,  a  splendid  woman  commands  our 
admiration  by  her  purity  and  vigor.  She  is 
dressed  in  the  magnificent  Greek  drapery, 
which  has  the  charm  of  revealing  the  char- 
acter of  the  wearer.  Greek  folds  are  grand 
and  beautiful,  if  they  shroud  a  quiet  and 
strong  body;  they  are  fussy  and  unpleasing 
when  they  hide  limbs  unfit  for  noble  deeds. 
The  turn. of  the  head  brings  into  play  the 
perfect  muscles  of  the  neck;  and  the  head 
with  the  intensely  satisfying  curve  of  the 
skull,  not  less  than  the  proud  line  of  the 
forehead  and  nose,  brings  to  our  mind  all 
the  qualities  of  the  god-woman. 

Pheidias  was  far  ahead  of  some  modern 
teachers  who  would  distinguish  sex  in  the 
deity.  His  genius  understood  the  combined 
idea,  while  his  vision  saw  the  parts.  In  his 
Athena  statues  he  has  given  us  a  pleasing 
conception  of  the  divine  woman,  and  his 
Zeus  was  the  expression  of  the  grandest  pos- 
sible idea  of  God.  But  before  we  discuss 
his  famous  Zeus  we  must  mention  the  great- 
est of  all  his  Athena  statues,  surnamed  the 
"Parthenos, "  i.  e.,  the  Virgin.  She  was  of 
gold  and  ivory,  a  standing  figure  thirty- 
eight  feet  tall,  easily  posed  on  one  leg;  in 
her  right  hand  she  held  a  Nike,  while  her 
left  touched  her  shield,  which  was  richly 
decorated,  and  in  the  hollow  of  which  her 
sacred  snake  rested  in  gigantic  coils.  Mil- 
lions worth  of  gold  and  ivory  had  been  used, 
and  the  statue  stood  in  a  temple  especially 
built  for  it,  the  Parthenon.  To-day  not 
one  vestige  is  left  of  all  this  splendor  save 
the  sign  on  the  shattered  pavement  of  the 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


249 


ruined  temple,  where  the  base  of  the  statue 
had  once  been  erected.  Two  small  and 
poorly  wrought  statuettes,  which  are  late 
copies,  and  a  wordy  description  by  an  unin- 
spired hand,  together  with  the  verdict  of  the 
ancients  that  this  Athena  was  unequaled, 
are  all  we  have  to  guide  us.  Fortunately 
we  know  more  about  the  Zeus,  for  besides 
many  short  criticisms  by  trustworthy  au- 
thors we  have  an  excellent  description  by  one 
of  the  most  sympathetic  ancient  art  critics, 
a  man  named  Dio.  who  from  the  sweet  flow 
of  his  words  has  received  the  surname 
"Chrysostomos, "  i.  e.,  golden  mouthed. 

Unlike  the  Athena  Parthenos,  Zeus  was 
represented  as  seated  in  his  temple  at 
Olympia,  scepter  in  hand  and  holding  a 
Nike  in  the  other.  He  was  of  gold  and 
ivory,  and  of  colossal  size.  ''The  measure- 
ments," says  Pausanias,  "are  recorded,  but 
I  will  not  praise  those  who  made  them,  for 
the  measurements  which  they  give  fall  far 
short  of  the  impression  which  the  statue 
makes  on  the  spectator."  This  overpower- 
ing impression  is  often  spoken  of  by  ancient 
writers,  and  since  the  statue  itself  is  irre- 
trievably lost  and  the  small  copies  which 
may  be  extant  do  not  convey  much  meaning, 
it  may  best  serve  our  purpose  to  hear  some 
of  these  statements.  Says  Dio  Chrysostom, 
"But  our  Zeus  is  peaceful  and  mild  in  every 
way,  as  it  were  the  guardian  of  Hellas  when 
she  is  of  one  mind  and  not  distraught  with 
faction. "  And  Quintillian,  a  Roman  writer, 
believed  that  the  statue  of  Zeus  in  Olympia 
kept  adding  new  strength  to  the  religion 
which  in  his  time  was  beginning  to  weaken 
in  the  mind  of  the  people  before  the  wave  of 
learned  skepticism.  But  no  description  cer- 
tainly is  more  beautiful  than  the  confession 
of  Dio  Chrysostom  that  whosoever  had  seen 
the  statue  henceforth  could  never  form  an- 
other impression  of  the  God  or  think  of  him 
in  any  other  way;  "and,"  says  he,  "if  there 
is  a  man  heavy  laden  and  full  of  sorrow  in 
his  soul  who  has  suffered  many  ills  and  ex- 
perienced much  woe  in  life  so  that  sweet 
sleep  does  no  longer  visit  him,  I  believe,  if 
he  were  to  stand  off  against  the  statue  he 
could  forget  his  sorrows,  one  and  all,  and 
would  recover." 

There  is  no  surer  remedy  against  the  sor- 


rows of  life  than  the  enjoyment  of  beauty. 
The  beauty  of  our  Christian  religion,  the 
beauty  of  nature,  the  beauty  of  statues  and 
pictures,  the  beauty  of  our  homes,  of  life, 
and  of  love.  If  we  only  could  make  all 
people  hungry  after  beauty,  how  quickly 
narrowmindedness  and  sin  would  disappear! 
Some  people  are  born  with  the  power  to  en- 
joy beauty;  others  must  train  themselves  to 
it,  and  there  is  no  better  way  to  do  so  than 
by  studying  what  the  noblest  masters  have 
wrought  in  art,  and  by  seeing  and  enjoying 
the  beauty  about  us. 

In  comparison  with  the  Olympian  Zeus  all 
the  other  statues  by  Pheidias,  of  which  a 
kind  tradition  has  preserved  the  names,  fall 
into  insignificance.  It  is  of  less  importance 
for  us  to  mention  them,  as  no  certain  copies 
of  any  of  them  are  extant.  There  is,  how- 
ever, one  other  monument  on  which  Pheidias 
has  inscribed  his  name  for  all  ages.  The 
Athenians  have  built  the  grandest  temple 
which  human  devotion  has  ever  offered  to 
divine  love,  and  it  was  Pheidias  whom  they 
put  in  charge  of  this  work.  The  temple  it- 
self is  imposing  even  to-day  in  its  ruins,  and 
the  great  part  of  its  sculptured  decorations 
which  are  preserved  prove  the  truth  of  the 
famous  statement,  that 

"A  thing  of  beauty  is  a  joy  forever." 

We  may  therefore  feel  that  we  are  not 
bidding  good-bye  to  Pheidias  when  we  turn 
next  to  the  discussion  of  the  Parthenon.  It 
was  Perikles,  the  great  statesman,  who  con- 
ceived the  plan  to  honor  the  goddess  by  the 
erection  of  such  a  superb  building,  but  the 
man  who  really  built  it,  who  had  visions  of 
beauty,  and  the  genius  to  incorporate  them 
into  stone,  was  none  other  than  Pheidias. 


T 


HE  PARTHENON  SCULPTURES. 

(7) 


Where  volumes  have  been  written 
on  the  architectural  refinements 
of  the  Parthenon  it  would  be  presump- 
tive to  attempt  a  description.  It  was, 
however,  not  only  the  architecture  that 
made  the  glory  of  the  building,  but  the 
sculptures.  The  majority  of  them  can  to-day 


250 


SCULPTURE: 


be  seen  in  the  British  Museum  in  London, 
where  the  zeal  of  Lord  Elgin  brought  them 
in  the  beginning  of  our  century,  after  they 
had  stood  the  vicissitudes  of  two  millennia, 
the  destructions  of  violent  explosions,  the 
ambition  of  conquerors,  and  the  greed  of  the 
barbarous  inhabitants  who  had  developed 
the  habit  of  making  lime  from  any  accessible 
pieces  of  marble  disregardful  of  the  sculpture 
decorating  them. 

In  the  east  pediment  the  artist  had  told 
the  story  of  the  birth  of  Athena  by  means 
of  a  magnificent  set  of  figures  in  the  round, 
and  in  the  west  pediment  he  had .  repre- 


NIKE,    FROM   THE   PARTHENON.      LONDON. 

sented  in  a  similar  way  the  struggle  between 
Athena  and  Poseidon  for  the  supremacy 
over  fair  Athens.  Above  the  columns 
there  ran,  like  a  wreath  encircling  the  build- 
ing, a  series  of  square  slabs  of  marble — the 
so-called  metopes — which  were  decorated 
with  two  figures  each,  in  very  high  relief. 
The  building  had  a  colonnade  running 
around  it,  and  inside  of  this  a  sculptured 
and  unbroken  frieze  tied  the  walls  together 
with  a  band  as  it  were,  so  beautiful  that  it 
has  never  been  equaled. 

In  every  book  on  art,  wherever  there  is  a 
museum,  representations  of  these  Parthenon 


figures  may  be  found.  He  who  sees  and 
understands  one  of  them  cannot  rest  until 
he  has  seen  them  all;  to  him  life  would  seem 
deprived  of  a  great  joy,  if  he  could  not 
have  the  preciousness  of  the  Parthenon 
sculptures  satisfy  with  their  quiet  glory  his 
beauty-hungry  heart. 

The  center  figures  of  the  east  pediment 
are  lost.  They  probably  represented  not 
only  Zeus,  out  of  whose  brow  Athena  had 
sprung  when  Hephaistos  had  dealt  him  the 
blow  with  the  mighty  axe,  but  also  these 
latter  two  divinities.  In  the  left  corner,  the 
head  and  shoulders  of  Helios  were  rising  from 
the  sea.  This  sun-god  was  thought  of  as  driv- 
ing a  four-horse  chariot,  but  only  the  heads 
of  the  noble  beasts  were  shown  above  the 
waves,  which  in  ripples  flowed  off  their 
necks  and  clung  to  the  arms  of  the  god. 
The  roof  of  the  pediment  projected,  and 
Helios  was  shown  in  the  farthest  corner. 
His  horses  seemed  eager  to  bring  light  to 
the  world,  and  in.  their  haste  pulled  in  un- 
even rows.  Thus,  the  outer  one  was  turned 
far  off,  and  as  he  raised  his  divine  head  it 
projected  considerably  beyond  the  edge  of 
the  pediment  roof.  It  was  carved  of  bright 
marble,  and  caught  and  fully  reflected  the 
rays  of  the  sun — it  was  the  dawn  announc- 
ing Helios. 

Among  other  figures  on  the  left  there  was  a 
god  facing  the  sun,  who  had  taken  his  seat  on 
the  rocks  with  his  back  to  the  center  scene 
in  godly  rest  (see  the  cut,  p.  87);  and  then, 
after  two  seated  figures,  came  Iris,  the  mes- 
senger of  Mt.  Olympos,  hurrying  off  with 
the  news  that  Athena  was  born,  and  an- 
other divinity — perhaps  Nike — on  a  similar 
errand.  She  was  clad  in  a  short  garment 
of  beautiful  texture,  and  as  the  winds 
pressed  against  her  its  folds  were  embedded 
in  her  skin  and  clung  to  it,  unwilling  to 
leave  such  perfect  form.  Then  came  the 
center  group,  and  beyond  it,  towards  the 
right  corner,  the  group  of  three  divinities, 
who  cannot  be  identified  since  they  bear  no 
outward  signs  of  their  station,  but  are  com- 
monly known  'as  the  "Moirai,"  or  Fates. 
Their  heads  are  gone,  but  there  they  sit  or 
recline  forever  in  sublime  repose,  a  me- 
mento not  only  of  what  a  Greek  could 
dream  and  feel,  but  also  that  he  knew  how 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


251 


THE  MORAI  OR  FATES,  FROM  THE  PARTHENON.   LONDON, 


to  express  his  visions.  Words  are  power- 
less to  describe  these  figures.  Masterful 
female  forms  and  a  delicate  yet  tangible 
drapery  combine  to  give  us  one  lasting  im- 
pression of  beauty.  The  reader  is  urged  to 
form  his  own  opinions.  Let  him  look  and 
think,  and  look  again,  if  he  would  under- 
stand the  full  meaning  of  these  wonderful 
creations. 

From  the  last  group  of  this  pediment 
where  Selene,  the  Moon,  is  driving  her 
horses  to  rest  and  is  setting  in  the  sea,  only 
her  torso  and  the  head  of  one  of  the  horses 
are  left.  Sculptors  agree  that  this  head  is 


HORSE   OF   SELENE.      FROM   THE   PANTHENON.       LONDON. 


one  of  the  sublimest  creations  of  art.  This 
dumb  beast  has  a  character  of  his  own,  and 
•  is  no  less  divine  than  his  mistress.  Involun- 
tarily we  recall  the  lines  of  Homer  where 
Zeus  is  looking  down  upon  the  immortal 
horses  which  grieve  at  the  death  of  Patroklos 
and  cannot  be  comforted.  Their  manes  are 
soiled,  and  tears  drop  slowly  from  their 
heavy  lids.  It  is  sympathy,  the  divinest 
passion  of  the  human  heart  which  is  rending 
their  soul ;  and  it  is  a  combination  of  godly 
qualities  which  makes  us  admire  this  horse's 
head. 

None  of  the  figures  of  the  west  pediment 
can  compare  with  those  of  the  eastern,  which 
we  have  just  described,  and  only  one  is  well 
enough  preserved  to  need  mention  here.  It 
is  a  river  god,  who  goes  under  the  name  of 
the  ' '  Kephissos,  "or  "  Ilissus. ' '  (See  the  cut, 
p.  22.)  The  pose  is  free  and  fluent,  well 
indicative  of  the  gentle  course  of  a  river 
with  never  a  moment's  rest,  the  waters 
flowing  on  slowly,  surely;  and  about  him 
clings  a  piece  of  drapery  entirely  unlike  the 
garments  which  veil  the  Fates.  This  cloth 
is  Wet — we  can  almost  feel  its  dampness  and 
see  its  waters  drop.  It  accompanies  in  dar- 
ing and  sweeping  lines  the  quiet  curves  of 
the  god's  figure  (partly  at  the  back,  and  not 
visible  in  the  face  view  of  the  cut),  and  thus 


SCULPTURE: 


enhances  the  idea  of  undulating  waves, 
which  the  human  body  alone  could  not  give 
without  doing  violence  to  natural  semblance. 


T 


HE  PARTHENON  SCULPTURES. 

— Continued.  (8) 


The  metopes  are  of  very  uneven 
workmanship,  a  fact  which  scholars 
seem  to  have  found  difficult  to  explain  be- 
cause it  was  Pheidias  who  had  general 
charge  of  everything.  This  is  quite  true, 
but  we  must  not  forget  that  Perikles,  under 
whose  lead  the  Athenians  went  to  the  stu- 


LAPITH   AND   CENTAUR.      FROM   THE   PARTHENON.      LONDON. 


pendous  expense  of  building  the  Parthenon, 
was  a  statesman  of  unequaled  skill.  He 
wanted  to  erect  a  monument  to  the  gods 
which  should  be  so  full  of  beauty  that  it 
could  never  be  surpassed,  but  he  also  wanted 
to  satisfy  the  meddlesome  middle  classes  at 
home,  and  therefore  took  special  pains  to 
have  all  artists  and  artisans  in  Athens  em- 
ployed in  the  building,  as  we  are  told  by 
Plutarch  in  his  masterful  life  of  Perikles. 
The  unevenness  of  the  work  of  the  Par- 
thenon, therefore,  especially  in  the  metopes 
and  portions  of  the  frieze,  far  from  aston- 
ishing us,  may  teach  us  the  state  of  art  in 
Athens  at  that  time.  Pheidias,  it  is  almost 


universally  agreed  now,  was  responsible  for 
the  general  plan  of  the  decorations,  while 
the  execution  was  entrusted  to  the  several 
schools  and  sculptors  of  Athens.  The  com- 
parison, therefore,  of  the  poorest  with  the 
best  work  is  very  instructive.  We  can  see 
the  rapid  advance  which  some  artists  had 
made  over  others,  an  advance  which  proba- 
bly was  due  to  the  influence  of  Pheidias 
himself,  since  none  of  his  contemporaries 
are  ever  mentioned  as  his  equal.  It  will 
suffice  to  pass  in  review  some  of  the  best 
sculptures,  because  it  is  almost  exclusively 
on  them  and  not  on  the  less-inspired  works 
that  the  next  generation  built  its  chief  at- 
tainments. 

Our  illustration  shows  a  metope  from 
the  southern  side  of  the  temple,  where 
the  mythical  fight  between  the  Lapiths 
and  the  Centaurs,  the  latter  being  half 
men  half  beasts,  is  represented.  The 
Lapith — or,  we  might  also  say,  the 
Greek — is  getting  the  better  of  his  ad- 
versary. One  look  suffices  to  show 
that  the  figure  of  the  Lapith  has  been 
entirely  removed  from  the  realm  of 
myth.  He  is  such  a  man  as  could  be 
seen  by  the  hundred  in  Athens  daily; 
and  we  are  probably  not  far  wrong  if 
we  believe  that  the  model  from  which 
the  artist  carved  this  figure  was  an 
actual  youth  who  exercised  in  the  gym- 
nasium. There  the  artist  had  watched 
him  in  his  sports  and  had  caught  and 
well  remembered  the  pose  which  he 
has  here  used  to  excellent  advantage. 
Skill  and  strength  combine  against 
the  brute  force  of  the  Centaur,  who,  in 
agony  at  a  sudden  wound  in  his  back, 
begins  to  sink  on  his  haunches  and  is  unable 
to  escape  his  pursuer.  The  Greek  holds 
him  with  his  powerful  left,  then  swings 
around  to  fetch  a  blow,  and  soon  his  right, 
with  whatever  weapon  it  once  held,  will 
crush  his  beastly  antagonist.  The  compo- 
sition is  strong,  the  execution  is  excellent; 
the  effect,  however,  is  marred  by  the  dra- 
pery, which,  in  itself  very  good  and  a  study 
almost  of  perfection,  nevertheless  retards 
the  action.  It  is  too  obviously  added  as  a 
background,  and  shows  that  the  particular 
artist  who  made  this  metope  had  not  yet 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


253 


attained  the  full  development  of  his  master- 
ful powers. 

In  another  group  the  tables  are  turned 
with  a  vengeance;  the  Greek  is  dead,  the 
fire  of  youth  and  the  impetuosity  of  the  hero 
have  succumbed,  but  even  in  death  this  boy 
is  beautiful.  His  head  is  sinking  low,  while 
above  him  the  Centaur  dances  in  exuberant 
glee.  The  right  leg  of  the  Centaur — now 
broken — is  locked  with  the  limb  of  his  foe, 
who  is  gradually  growing  cold;  and  swing- 
ing the  boy's  leg  up  and  down,  the  prancing 
Centaur  draws  fresh  hilarity  from  each  touch. 
The  dead  panther  catches  the  frenzy,  and 
behind  the  Centaur's  back  his  lifeless  tail 
and  paw  swing  in  the  wind  in  the  wildest 
excitement.  The  group  is  very  impressive; 
it  relates  a  special  incident  of  the  Lapith- 
Centaur  war;  but  it  also  teaches  an  eternal 
truth,  and  reminds  us  of  the  many  times 
we  ourselves  have  seen  wanton  evil  trium- 
phant by  force  cxver  unskilled  righteousness. 
Only  if  we  are  willing  to  throw  our  influ- 
ence and  ourselves  in  for  the  advancement 
of  good,  shall  we  be  spared  in  future  the  sad 
experience  of  mourning  at  the  death  of  the 
right  cause  which  unassisted  had  to  die  con- 
quered by  wicked  ignorance. 

No  terms  can  be  too  high  for  the  excel- 
lence of  this  metope,  and  yet  it  is  not  per- 
fect. The  Greek  is  dead;  the  arrangement 
of  the  figures  and  the  drooping  head  indicate 
it;  but  is  his  body  really  that  of  a  dead 
man?  It  is  not.  Look  at  his  figure  alone, 
and  you  will  not  receive  the  impression 
of  a  dead  body  where  all  the  muscles  p 
are  in  eternal  rest.  Our  Greek  seems 
to  be  writhing  in  pain,  and  to  be  lying 
in  remarkable  contortions.  We  ought 
not  to  blame  the  artist  for  this  short- 
coming, for  the  true  representation  of 
the  dead  was  not  known  in  his  time, 
and  many  years  elapsed  before  sculp- 
tors were  able  to  attain  to  anything  like 
verisimilitude  in  this  difficult  task. 

But  we  must  leave  these  sculptures 
in  high  relief  and  look  at  a  few  slabs 
from  the  frieze,  which  was  executed 
in  low  relief.  In  the  frieze  the  artist 
was  not  limited  in  space  as  in  the 
metopes — where  square  slabs  of  defi- 
nite size  and  unconnected  had  to  be 


filled  with  separate  groups — because  the 
frieze  was  one  continuous  band  running 
about  the  temple.  The  artist  had  selected 
for  its  decoration  the  procession  of  all 
Athens  at  the  festival  which  the  city  cele- 
brated with  special  pomp  once  every  four 
years  in  the  honor  of  Athena.  The  wealth 
of  motives,  the  power  of  execution,  the  ar- 
rangement and  the  even  flow  of  the  whole 
defy  adequate  description.  Single  figures, 
men  on  horseback,  cavalcades,  stately  maid- 
ens, cows  and  other  animals  for  the  sacrifice, 
chariots,  magistrates  and  propitious  gods 
watching  their  beloved  people  carry  us 
over  centuries  of  time  and  the  distance  of 
lands  and  sea  to  Athens  on  her  happiest  day. 
(See  the  cut,  p.  120.)  There  we  see  the 
nobility  assemble  outside  the  city  gates, 
mount  their  lively  little  steeds,  fall  into  line, 
and  canter  off.  In  one  place  we  see  a  be- 
lated youth,  who  has  had  to  adjust  his  gar- 
ment and  has  dropped  the  reins.  At  once 
his  horse  has  turned,  and  glad  at  his  sudden 
freedom  is  galloping  away  in  the  opposite 
direction.  We  almost  hear  the  joyful  clat- 
tering of  his  hoofs,  and  our  hearts  grow 
wide  in  the  sympathy  which  we  ever  feel 
with  man  or  beast  that  are  healthy  enough 
in  soul  or  body  to  enjoy  the  great  blessings 
of  freedom. 

Our  next  example  is  taken  from  the  central 
portion  of  the  frieze  where  the  procession  is 
in  full  progress.  Prancing  horses  in  endless 
variety  are  curbed  by  the  hands  of  youths 


A    SECTION    FROM    THE    PARTHENON    FRIEZI 


254 


SCULPTURE: 


who  attend  here  in  honor  of  the  gods.  But 
there  is  no  confusion;  the  artist  has  under- 
stood how  to  carve  horses'  bodies  and  horses' 
legs  and  human  limbs  with  stupendous  skill 
on  a  surface  never  exceeding  the  small 
height  of  from  one  to  two  inches  from  the 
background. 

The  Parthenon  is  one  of  those  sublime 
creations  by  the  hand  of  man  which  for  all 
time  prove  the  divine  origin  of  humankind. 
There  are  many  fine  works  of  Greek  art,  but 
we  know  of  no  instance  where  the  genius  of 
masters  and  the  devotion  of  the  people  have 
more  successfully  worked  together  than  on 
the  Parthenon  at  Athens. 


TEMPLE   TO    NIKE   APTEROS   AT   ATHENS. 


c 


ONTEMPORARY  SCULP- 
TURES IN  ATHENS.  POLY- 
KLEITOS.(9) 


The  Parthenon  did  not  remain 
the  only  building  erected  to  the  honor  of  the 
gods  in  the  fifth  century  before  Christ.  But 
it  is  by  so  far  the  grandest  of  them  all  that 
even  its  ruins  speak  to  us  to-day  in  more 
forcible  terms  than  the  other  temples  of 
Athens  which  a  kindlier  fate  has  better  pre- 
served. To  one  of  them  time  has  done 
hardly  any  damage  at  all.  The  so  called 
Theseion  looks  to-day  substantially  as  it  did 
two  thousand  years  ago.  Though  not 
erected  in  the  same  loveliness  and  perfection 
of  proportions  as  the  Parthenon,  it  was  built 
in  the  same  style  of  achitecture,  the  Doric. 
The  columns,  without  any  base,  are  com- 
paratively short  and  thick;  their  capitals 
are  simple;  the  architrave  is  heavy;  and 
above  it  stand  the  triglyphs  and  metopes. 
Only  a  few  of  the  latter  were  sculptured 
in  the  way  just  described  for  the  Parthenon. 
The  pediments  were  filled  with  sculptures 
now  lost. 

Much  smaller  than  either  Parthenon  or 
Theseion  was  a  beautiful  little  structure  of 
such  small  proportions  that  we  hesitate  to 
call  it  a  temple  at  all.  And  yet  a  temple  it 
was,  dedicated  to  Nike  Apteros,  or  Wingless 
Victory.  It  is  built  in  the  Ionic  style;  its 
proportions  are  slender ;  its  columns  on  ap- 
propriate bases  support  an  entablature  of 
much  grace,  around  which  an  unbroken 


frieze  tells  its  story  by  means  of  sculptures. 
The  roof  of  the  building  unfortunately  is 
gone  forever. 

The  mention  of  these  buildings,  with 
others  like  the  Erechtheion  and  Propylaea, 
will  suffice  to  give  the  reader  an  idea  of  the 
structures  and  sculptures  in  Athens  during 
and  immediately  after  the  time  of  Perikles. 
As  an  example  of  the  portrait  sculptor  we 
mention  Kresilas,  a  contemporary  of  Peri- 
kles, who  wrought  his  likeness  in  stone.  We 
probably  possess  a  Roman  copy  of  his  work 
in  a  bust  now  in  the  British  Museum. 
Apart  from  the  fact  that  it  is  Perikles  whom 
we  see  here,  the  bust  is  instructive  as  show- 
ing us  a  portrait  of  the  fifth  century  B.  C. 
The  artist  did  not  care  to  render  all  the  in- 
dividual traits  of  the  face  with  exactitude 
and  absolute  truthfulness  to  life;  he  has 
given  us  a  grand  conception  of  the  man,  an 
abstraction,  as  it  were,  of  his  noble  char- 
acter. We  can  read  in  this  face  sublime 
regard  for  mankind,  a  musing  nature,  and 
the  expression  of  an  active  heart  which 
never  allowed  any  but  the  noblest  passions 
to  be  transformed  into  deeds. 

The  influence  of  Perikles  was  great;  we 
feel  it  now,  for  our  civilization  is  builded 
upon  Greek  attainments,  and  Perikles,  as  no 
other,  was  the  man  that  shaped  them. 
Pheidias  was  his  friend,  and  it  was  the 
patronage  of  Perikles  that  made  it  pos- 
sible for  Pheidias  to  develop  his  powers  and 
to  impress  the  stamp  of  his  genius  upon  the 
art  both  of  his  contemporaries  and  of  subse- 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


255 


quent  generations.  Under  his  influence  the 
division  between  Doric  and  Ionic  art  soon 
began  to  disappear. 

The  chief  center  of  Doric  art  had  always 
been  in  Argos  and  in  the  neighboring 
Sikyon.  The  head  of  this  school  during 
the  lifetime  of  Pheidias  was  Polykleitos. 
From  the  scant  literary  notices  it  would 
seem  that  Polykleitos  was  the  younger  con- 
temporary, though  some  discoveries  have 
lately  been  made  which  go  to  show  the  con- 
trary. 

Polykleitos  bestowed  his  chief  attention 
upon  the  human  body  itself,  and  did  not 
think  of  it  as  the  seat  of  the  soul.  He  never 
represented  mental  states  or  passions  in  his 
figures,  but  endeavored  to  have  them  as  near 
to  life  as  his  art  could  make  them.  His 
favorite  material,  therefore,  was  bronze, 
which,  far  better  than  the  ethereal  marble, 
is  apt  to  copy  with  anatomical  correctness 
the  actual  appearance  of  the  human  frame. 
Modern  sculptors  often  have  forgotten  this 
distinction,  and  have  used  bronze  for  statues 
whose  spiritual  qualities  are  far  better  suited 
to  execution  in  marble.  This  preference  for 
bronze  is  often  due  to  the  fact  that  marble 


THE    DORYPHOROS    OF    POLYKLEITOS.      NAPLES. 


A  ROMAN  COPY  OF   THE  PERIKLES  BY  KRESILAS.    LONDON. 


easily  weathers  in  the  open  air  where  the 
majority  of  our  statues  are  erected. 

Polykleitos  made  a  special  study  of  the 
proportions  of  the  human  body,  and  pub- 
lished the  result  of  his  investigations  in  a 
treatise  which  he  called  the  "Kanon, "  i.  <?., 
the  Rule.  He  was,  however,  not  satisfied 
to  teach  with  words  alone,  and,  therefore, 
also  made  a  statue  to  embody  his  views.  Of 
this  statue  we  probably  have  a  copy  in  a 
piece  of  Roman  workmanship  now  in  the 
museum  in  Naples.  It  represents  a  power- 
ful young  man  in  an  easy,  striding  attitude, 
who  shoulders  a  spear  (mistakenly  restored 
as  a  stick),  and,  therefore,  is  now  generally 
known  as  the  "Spear  Bearer,"  or,  to  use  the 
more  common  Greek  name,  the  "Dory- 
phoros. "  The  heavy  build  of  the  athlete 
and  his  almost  obtrusively  prominent  mus- 
cles might  easily  lessen  our  high  opinion  of 
the  leader  of  the  Argive  School,  in  spite  of 
the  praise  bestowed  upon  him  by  the 
ancients,  if  we  did  not  remember  that 
Polykleitos  wrought  his  statue  in  bronze, 


256 


SCULPTURE: 


AMAZON    AFTER    POLYKLEITOS.       BERLIN. 


are  to  blame,  if  our  cities  are  filled  with  in- 
ferior monuments  instead  of  those  creations 
of  beauty  which  the  training  and  genius  of 
our  artists  can  now  give. 

As  companion  piece  to  the  Doryphoros  we 
may  mention  the  statue  of  an  Amazon  which 
is  extant  in  several  Roman  copies,  and  is 
generally  referred  to  Polykleitos.  We 
notice  at  once  the  same  striding  position 
and  general  proportions,  which,  of  course, 
in  the  case  of  a  woman,  are  somewhat  more 
slender.  The  Amazon  is  draped,  and  the 
pectoral  and  abdominal  muscles,  therefore, 
which  in  the  Doryphorus  gave  us  an  un- 
pleasant impression  of  exaggeration,  cannot 
be  seen.  The  drapery  is  well  wrought,  and 
by  means  of  contrast  enhances  the  beauty  of 
the  female  form.  It  is,  however,  important 
to  notice  that  the  statue  is  draped  at  all. 
Fond  as  the  Greeks  were  of  the  nude  and 
the  loveliness  of  the  form,  they  rarely  repre- 
sented their  women  entirely  nude  in  the 
best  periods  of  their  art.  They  showed  as 
much  of  the  female  body  as  "with  decency 
could  be  seen  and  enjoyed,"  but  no  more; 
and  though,  in  this  statue,  the  breasts  and  the 
legs  excite  our  admiration  for  their  beauty, 
none  but  refined  thoughts  can  cross  our  minds 
as  we  look  at  this  Amazon  and  analyze  the 
impresisons  which  she  makes  upon  us. 


while  we  are  now  looking  at  a  copy  in  mar- 
ble. Where  the  shining  bronze  would  make 
the  transitions  easy  and  beautiful,  the  mar- 
ble over-accentuates  the  divisions  between 
the  muscles,  and  gives  the  impression  that 
the  sculptor  had  well  understood  the 
anatomy  of  the  several  parts,  but  had  not 
taken  into  account  the  fact  that  they  are 
nothing  but  subdivisions  of  a  united  whole. 
This  Roman  copy,  therefore,  teaches  us 
that  a  great  work  of  art  must  be  thought 
out  in  the  material  into  which  it  is  to  be 
wrought,  that  it  is  a  pernicious  habit  into 
which  many  modern  sculptors  have  fallen 
to  think  out  their  works  altogether  in  clay 
models,  while  they  entrust  the  execution, 
either  in  marble  or  in  bronze,  to  their  assist- 
ants, or,  even  worse,  to  irresponsible  work- 
men. A  better  standard  will  prevail  as  soon 
as  the  public  demand  it.  They  it  is  who 


G 


REEK  SCULPTURE  IN  THE 
FOURTH  CENTURY.  (10) 


The  Peloponnesian  War  lasted 
almost  thirty  years,  and  brought 
with  it  untold  miseries.  It  loosened  the 
passions  of  the  people,  and  the  demagogues 
learned  how  to  play  upon  that  most  decep- 
tive and  elusive  of  all  of  them — national 
honor.  When  Greece  awoke  from  her  awful 
nightmare  in  404  B.  C.,  much  was  changed; 
Athens  was  defeated,  and  the  Greek  states 
had  lost  their  natural  leader.  Perikles  was 
dead;  the  great  poets  were  gone;  and  with 
them  Sophokles  had  laid  aside  the  pen  which 
had  known  how  to  sketch  for  his  Greeks  and 
for  us  "people  as  they  ought  to  be."  The 
state  under  the  protectorate  of  just  gods 
was  no  longer  supreme.  Each  individual 
assumed  that  supremacy  for  himself,  and 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


257 


pressed  into  his  own  service  both  literature 
and  art,  the  handmaidens  of  the  former 
national  glory.  A  wave  of  radical  skepti- 
cism had  begun  to  sweep  over  Greece,  and 
the  distant  grandeur  of  the  gods,  as  repre- 
sented by  the  colossal  works  of  Pheidias,  no 
longer  appealed  to  her.  Personal  luxury 
and  wealth  soon  ruled  supreme.  But  with 
all  this  Greece  was  not  bad;  she  had  lost 
much,  but  she  gained  more.  The  ever- 
repeated  story  of  "the  good  old  times"  is 
false;  the  world  always  grows  better,  and 
on  the  ruin  of  things  dear  to  our  fathers  we 
build  the  foundations  of  greater  attain- 
ments, and  our  children  again  will  be  nearer 
than  we  now  are  to  the  attainment  of  per- 
fection. 

Can  we  see  this  great  principle  realized 
in  Greek  art?  In  the  fifth  century,  with  all 
the  grandeur  and  divinity  in  sculpture,  it 
was  the  body  that  the  artists  represented; 
the  duality  of  man  was  unknown  to  them, 
and  the  thought  that  the  body,  after  all,  is 
nothing  but  the  seat  of  the  soul,  never  seems 
to  have  occurred  to  them.  But  with  the 
beginning  of  the  fourth  century  it  is  the 
interest  in  the  individual  which  is  para- 
mount; and  who  can  study  any  individual 
at  all  without  coming  face  to  face  with  his 
soul? 

This  really  is  the  fundamental  difference 
between  Greek  art  in  the  fifth  and  that  in 
the  fourth  century,  though  of  course  it  is  not 
the  only  one.  The  difference  of  technique, 
of  size,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  also  of 
material,  is  very  noticeable,  gold  and  ivory 
statues  of  colossal  size  being  frequent  only  in 
the  fifth  century.  Scholars  have  believed 
they  could  characterize  those  differences 
best  by  calling  the  fifth  century  the  period 
of  the  "grand  style,"  and  the  fourth  cen- 
tury the  period  of  the  "beautiful  style." 
As  masters  of  the  latter  style  three  names 
are  mentioned  of  unparalleled  repute: 
Praxiteles,  Skopas,  and  Lysippos.  Their 
work  is  so  characteristic  of  the  period,  and 
so  many-sided,  that  we  may  unhesitatingly 
confine  ourselves  here  to  the  study  of  these 
men  in  trying  to  grasp  the  spirit  of  their 
age. 

"Praxiteles,  who,  with  consummate  art," 
as  we  are  told,  "knew  how  to  fill  his  statues 


with  the  emotions  of  the  soul,"  was  born  in 
Athens,  the  son  of  a  sculptor,  and  of  a 
famous  family  of  artists.  We  do  not  know 
much  of  his  life,  but  what  little  is  known 
has  exclusive  reference  to  his  loving  disposi- 
tion. He  was  a  hard-working  man,  who  at 
the  end  of  a  busy  day  sought  recreation  in 
the  company  of  friends,  and,  best  of  all,  of 
his  beloved  Phryne.  She  seems  to  have 
been  a  very  beautiful  woman,  of  rare  intel- 
ligence and  unlimited  wit,  who  gladly 
accepted  the  deference  which  the  great  man 
showed  her,  and  thankfully  returned  his 
affection. 

Many  charming  little  stories  are  told  of 
these  two  people  who,  within  this  great  big 
world  seem  to  have  created  for  themselves 
a  little  world  of  their  own.  One  day,  when 
Praxiteles  had  lovingly  looked  upon  his 
Phryne,  she  asked  a  favor  of  him  which  he 
did  not  find  the  heart  to  refuse  her.  "Give 
me,"  she  said,  "as  a  sign  of  your  love  and  a 
present  to  myself,  the  statue  by  your  hand 
which  you  youiself  prize  highest  of  any  in 
your  studio."  "You  shall  have  it,"  he  said, 
and  those  who  know  him  by  his  works  can 
readily  imagine  a  smile  of  kindness  playing 
around  his  lips  as  he  granted  this  favor. 
"Thank  you,"  she  answered,  "but  which 
statue  is  it,  please?"  "That  I  cannot  tell 
you,"  replied  Praxiteles,  with  a  touch  of 
good-natured  mischief,  "please  find  it  out 
for  yourself."  And,  however  much  she 
pleaded,  he  was  firm  and  would  not  add  the 
second  favor  to  the  first.  Phryne  finally 
dropped  the  matter  and  resorted  to  a  ruse. 
When  Praxiteles  was  again  with  her  and 
easily  resting  on  her  couch,  a  slave  suddenly 
came  running  into  the  room:  "Praxiteles, 
your  studio  is  on  fire!"  he  cried.  The  sculp- 
tor, greatly  excited,  jumped  up,  and  as  he 
was  preparing  to  hurry  away  exclaimed, 
"Are  the  statues  all  lost?"  and  added  sadly, 
"If  my  Satyr  and  my  Eros  are  destroyed,  I 
have  lived  and  worked  in  vain. ' '  Where- 
upon Phryne  patted  him  on  his  shoulder, 
saying:  "Be  at  ease,  my  friend,  your  studio 
is  not  on  fire  at  all.  I  just  wanted  to  find 
out  which  one  of  your  statues  you  loved 
best."  She  then  claimed  the  Eros,  and 
dedicated  it  to  the  Gods.  The  God  of  love 
made  by  a  lover,  and  by  a  loving  woman 


'58 


SCULPTURE: 


offered  back  to  the  Gods!  Indeed  it  was 
Eros  in  his  kindliest  moods  of  whom  we  can 
get  a  glimpse  all  through  the  career  of  the 
great  sculptor,  and  Prof.  Klein  has  well 
expressed  it,  when  he  says  that  as  often  as 
Praxiteles  put  his  chisel  to  a  statue,  the  God 
of  love,  as  interested  witness,  was  peeping 
over  his  shoulder. 

None  of  the  more  famous  statues  by 
Praxiteles  are  now  extant,  and  only  few  of 
them  are  known  to  us  in  Roman  copies. 
But  we  are  fortunate  indeed  to  possess  at 


HERMES    WITH    DIONYSOS    BY    PRAXITELES.       OLYMPIA. 

least  one  original  by  his  hand.  When  the 
German  government  excavated  Olympia  in 
the  seventies,  his  Hermes  was  discovered 
with  broken  limbs  and  arms,  but  otherwise 
well  preserved.  It  is  the  only  Greek  statue 
in  the  round  which  we  can  assign  to  a 
definite  sculptor.  This  is  done  on  the 
authority  of  Pausanias,  who,  in  speaking  of 
the  temple  of  Hera  in  Olympia,  says,  "In 
later  times  some  more  offerings  were  dedi- 
cated in  the  temple  of  Hera,  and  among 
them  a  Hermes  of  marble  holding  the  little 


Dionysos  in  his  arms,  the  work  of  Praxi- 
teles." 

The  Hermes  is  entirely  nude.  He  stands 
erect,  yet  easily  resting  himself  on  the 
broken  trunk  of  a  tree  over  which  he  has 
thrown  his  cloak,  a  piece  of  cloth  of  such 
exquisite  texture  and  rendered  with  so  much 
truthfulness  to  actual  appearance  that  Mr. 
Gardner  can  quote  a  great  critic  as  saying, 
when  he  saw  the  first  picture  of  the  Hermes, 
"Why  did  they  leave  that  cloth  hanging 
there  when  they  photographed  the  statue?" 
In  his  arms  the  Hermes  holds  the  little 
Dionysos,  whom  he,  as  the  messenger  of 
the  gods,  is  bringing  to  the  Nymphs  to  be 
educated.  Full  of  childish  affection,  the  in- 
fant god  is  reaching  forth  his  caressing  arms 
to  his  big  brother,  but  Hermes  is  musingly 
looking  past  him;  he  seems  to  be  looking  at 
us,  and  we  cannot  help  being  drawn  within 
the  spell  of  these  longing  eyes  by  which 
only  a  great  master  could  have  known  how 
to  express  the  soul  of  the  statue.  The  lips- 
are  exquisite.  The  bodily  forms  are  well 
rounded,  the  anatomy  is  fully  understood 
and  well  brought  out,  but  the  transitions  are 
subtle  and  often  unnoticeable  unless  one 
steps  back  to  a  distance.  The  roundness  of 
form  is  for  some  tastes  too  delicate,  for  we 
associate  it  more  generally  with  the  beauty 
of  the  female  body,  while  we  expect  greater 
vigor  in  a  man.  Perhaps  this  view  is  right, 
but  whether  right  or  wrong,  the  skill  with 
which  Praxiteles  has  executed  what  he 
planned  is  marvelous.  If  we  would  appre- 
ciate it  we  must  go  to  see  the  statue  itself. 
No  cast  nor  photograph,  not  even  the  best, 
can  give  us  any  idea  of  it.  The  master's 
touch  is  everywhere,  and  this  one  statue 
can  teach  us  a  better  lesson  of  the  little 
trustworthiness  and  value  of  Roman  copies 
than  anything  else. 

With  this  lesson  in  mind  we  turn  to  a 
famous  statue  in  the  Capitoline  Museum. 
It  is  a  Satyr,  better  known  as  "The  Marble 
Faun."  to  use  Hawthorne's  expression. 
(See  the  cut,  p.  17.)  We  find  in  it  again 
the  same  graceful  and  easy  position,  the 
same  pleasant  outlook  into  the  distance. 
In  the  face  we  see  playful  and  sportive 
inattention  and  an  absent-minded  joy- 
fulness.  The  mouth  is  half  open,  with. 


THE    FORBES    MELEAGER.       CAMBRIDGE,   MASS. 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


261 


straight  lips,  which,  however,  show 
the  power  of  curving  most  beau- 
tifully; it  is  not  smiling,  and  yet 
a  prolonged  look  at  it  reveals  its 
catching  mirthfulness,  everything 
ready  for  a  smile.  The  whole  con- 
ception of  the  figure  is  excellent, 
but  look  at  the  execution!  Notice 
the  smooth  and  meaningless  lines  of 
the  legs,  without  modeling  and  with- 
out life.  The  abdomen  is  flat,  the 
breasts  are  without  the  exuberance 
of  youthful  blood  coursing  under  the 
gentleness  of  human  skin,  and  the 
panther  skin  around  the  shoulders 
is  treated  with  so  much  convention- 
ality that  it  is  unrecognizable  ex- 
cept for  the  head.  The  master's 
touch,  in  short,  is  as  conspicu- 
ously absent  in  this  statue  as  it 
greeted  us  at  every  point  in  the 
Hermes. 


G 


REEK  SCULPTURE  IN  THE 
FOURTH  CENTURY.  —  Contin- 
ued, (i  i) 


What  we  thus  contend  to  be  true 
of  the  Satyr  is  not  less  true  of  another  statue 
in  which  we  likewise  believe  to  possess  a 
copy  of  another  famous,  probably  the  most 
famous,  work  of  Praxiteles,  his  Knidian 
Aphrodite.  Praxiteles  had  made  two  statues 
of  the  goddess,  the  one  draped,  the  other 
nude.  When  they  were  finished  the  peo- 
ple of  the  island  of  Kos  sent  a  committee 
to  buy  one  of  them,  who  selected  the  draped 
one,  while  the  other  statue  was  eventually 
secured  by  the  people  of  Knidos.  Its  beauty 
was  supreme,  and  we  are  told  that  through- 
out antiquity  people  would  come  to  Knidos 
from  all  over  the  world  with  no  other 
purpose  than  to  see  this  beautiful  god- 
dess. The  Knidians  built  a  special  little 
temple  for  her,  open  on  the  sides,  so  that 
one  could  see  the  statue  from  many  points 
of  view.  The  temple  was  built  on  the  shore 
of  the  sea  into  which — as  it  seemed — the 
goddess  was  preparing  to  enter.  She  had 
already  removed  her  garment  and  gently 
dropped  it  onto  a  large  vase  at  her  side. 


APHRODITE   OF   KNIDOS   AFTER   PRAXITELES.      ROME. 

Thus  she  stood,  still  hesitating  to  step  into 
the  element  whence  she  was  born,  and  un- 
conscious of  any  observer — the  goddess  of 
beauty,  in  the  shape  of  the  most  beautiful 
woman ! 

In  looking  at  the  statue  in  the  Vatican 
Museum  to-day,  we  cannot  feel  the  rapture 
of  the  ancients.  And  this  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  we  have  before  us  nothing  but  a  copy, 
and  a  poor  one  at  that.  But  let  our  imag- 
ination play;  let  us  put  life  into  this  stone, 
and  add  to  it  the  charm  which  the  chisel  of 
Praxiteles  could  bestow,  and  we  can  then 
appreciate,  at  least  in  part,  the  exulting 
criticisms  of  the  ancients.  Says  Lucian, 
one  of  the  most  trustworthy  of  ancient  art 
critics,  "We  wanted  to  see  the  back  of  the 
statue,  and  went  to  the  rear  of  the  temple, 
where  the  trusted  door-keeper  opened  the 
shrine  for  us,  and  instantly  amazement 
seized  us  at  the  supreme  beauty  of  our  lady, 
and  my  Athenian  friend  exclaimed,  'By 
Herakles,  how  exquisite  is  the  rhythm  of 
the  back!  Just  see  those  splendid  hips! 
.  .  .  The  flesh  beneath  them  arches  in  mag- 
nificent lines,  and  is  neither  wanting  on  the 
bones  nor  growing  into  excessive  fullness. 
.  .  .  And  from  the  hips  along  the  legs  to 


262 


SCULPTURE: 


the  feet,  every  part  is  written  out  in  the 
most  beautiful  rhythm.'  ' 

The  Aphrodite  of  Knidos  was  one  of  the 
most  admired  statues  of  antiquity,  and  was 
very  frequently  copied.  Our  museums  are 
full  of  Aphrodite  statues,  which,  if  not  ex- 
actly like  her,  show  that  their  artists  had 
taken  their  motives  from  her  and  modified 
them  with  more  or  less  freedom.  Two  of 
the  best  known  of  these  statues  are  in  Italy. 
One  is  the  "Capitoline  Aphrodite"  in  Rome, 
the  other  the  so-called  "Venus  de  Medici" 
in  Florence.  (See  the  cut,  p.  95. )  The  latter 
is  below  life-size,  and  in  looking  at  her  we 
feel  that  all  the  divinity  of  the  Praxitelean 
goddess  has  left  her.  She  is  a  beautiful 
woman,  of  a  rather  coquettish  tempera- 
ment. Judged  as  such  and  not  as  a  god- 
dess, the  statue  is  a  marvelous  creation  of 
skill  and  of  feeling  for  beauty. 

Grace  and  gentleness  were  the  chief  char- 
acteristics of  the  style  of  Praxiteles;  his 
figures  were  at  ease,  with  well-balanced 
souls  whose  even  emotions  suited  the  quiet 
beauty  of  their  bodies.  Not  so  with  Skopas, 
whose  passions,  it  seems,  were  often  wild, 
and  appealed  more  forcibly  to  the  spectator 
because  of  their  fierce  discord  with  the 
splendid  charm  of  perfect  bodies.  In  skill 
and  workmanship  Skopas  probably  was  fully 
the  equal  of  Praxiteles,  but  here  their  re- 
semblance, as  most  scholars  tell  us,  ended; 
for  where  the  sunshine  of  an  even  disposi- 
tion speaks  to  us  from  the  works  of  the 
latter,  those  of  the  former  are  said  to  show 
a  wild  restlessness  of  mood. 

Skopas  was  born — we  do  not  know  where, 
perhaps  on  the  island  of  Paros,  about  420. 
He  never  stayed  at  one  place  for  any  length 
of  time,  worked  in  many  different  cities, 
and  traveled  extensively ;  and  like  the  city 
of  his  birth,  that  of  his  death  is  unknown 
to  us.  We  are  accustomed  to  have  but  scant 
knowledge  of  the  life  of  an  artist.  In  this 
case,  however,  we  are  doubly  unfortunate, 
tor  we  know,  or  perhaps  we  had  better  say 
knew,  until  recently,  next  to  nothing  of  his 
work  also.  We  lacked  the  very  fundaments 
on  which  to  build  a  study  of  his  style.  Such 
a  starting  point  we  have  now  fortunately 
found  in  two  heads  which  have  been  exca- 
vated at  Tegea  (a  small  place  in  the  Pelo- 


ponnesos),  and  which,  as  now  seems  almost 
certain,  can  be  referred  to  Skopas.  They 
are  very  much  battered  and  badly  stained, 
facts  which  make  their  reproduction  in 
photographic  plates  very  difficult,  not  to  say 
misleading.  They  are  the  heads  of  power- 
ful young  men — probably  warriors — and 
show  in  general  the  characteristics  which 
are  often  given  for  the  style  of  Skopas. 
Strictly  speaking,  these  two  heads  begin 
and  end  the  list  of  his  works  known  to  us 
to-day.  There  are,  however,  in  several 
museums  copies  of  Greek  works  belonging 
to  about  this  time,  upon  which  scholars 
have  come  to  look  with  more  or  less  confi- 
dence as  works  of  Skopas.  One  of  them  is 
the  statue  of  a  youth,  a  hunter,  which, 
therefore,  goes  by  the  name  of  Meleager, 
the  hunter  par  excellence  of  the  Greeks. 
The  best  of  the  extant  copies  has  only 
recently  been  excavated  near  Rome,  and  by 
the  generosity  of  Mr.  E.  W.  Forbes  found 
its  way  to  our  country,  and  into  the  newly- 
founded  Fogg  Museum  of  Fine  Arts  of 
Harvard  University.  (See  the  cut  p.  259.) 
Even  the  casual  observer  of  this  Meleager 
will  recognize  in  it  a  work  of  superior  work- 
manship, which  eclipses  by  far  any  of  the 
other  copies,  not  excluding  the  Meleager 
Medici,  the  best  head  known  heretofore. 
This  head  was  itself  so  much  better  than  all 
the  rest  that  some  scholars  actually  believed 
it  might  be  the  head  of  the  otherwise  lost 
original.  The  charm  of  the  Forbes  Melea- 
ger can  only  be  seen  and  felt.  To  run  the 
tips  of  one's  fingers  over  his  back  or  from 
the  breast  down  along  his  sides  gives  one  a 
sensation  of  life  and  of  touching  actual  epi- 
dermis. There  are  no  cold  and  dead  planes 
of  stone,  but  all  is  flesh  and  blood ;  and  on 
the  shoulder  the  touch  reveals  to  us,  beneath 
the  bolster  of  muscles  and  fat,  the  shape  of 
the  shoulder  blade  itself.  Prof.  Richard 
Norton,  describing  the  statue,  says,  "The 
body  is  at  rest,  yet  the  whole  set  of  it  (the 
turn  of  the  head,  the  bend  of  the  torso,  the 
length  of  the  back)  lacks  repose,  while 
the  open  lips  and  intense  look  of  the  eye 
show  that  the  mind  is  actively  at  work  and 
in  no  mood  of  quiet  reflection.  Now  it  is 
when  we  are  at  rest  and  the  mind  is  turned 
on  subjects  exterior  to  ourselves  that  our 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


263 


bodies  fall  into  positions  that  are  the  true 
index  of  our  general  character.  The  grace- 
ful position  betokens  a  trained  body  and  an 
educated  mind,  and  this  is  what  the  statue 
exhibits;  for  in  no  way  could  a  more  vivid 
presentation  of  the  hero  be  given  than  by 
this  clear-cut,  well-set-up  figure,  leaning  on 
his  reversed  spear,  resting  but  alert  even 
while  at  rest.  It  is  the  ideal  Greek  youth 
of  the  fourth  century.  .  .  .  He  is  the  per- 
fect product  of  his  time. " 

Now  let  us  look  again  at  the  statue  and 
form  our  own  conclusions.  We  shall  see 
that  if  we  would  assign  this  statue  to  Skopas 
we  can  hardly  accept  either  the  description 
of  Prof.  Norton  or  the  above  mentioned 
characteristics  of  the  style  of  Skopas  as  in 
every  instance  correct.  It  is  always  dan- 
gerous to  draw  conclusions  from  only  one  or 
two  remains.  Because  the  heads  from  Tegea 
show  the  fierceness  of  the  wild  mood,  it 
does  not  follow  by  any  means  that  all  the 
works  of  this  master  must  exhibit  the  same. 
Our  Meleager  is  quiet;  but  although  he  cer- 
tainly has  a  more  active  mind  than,  for  in- 
stance, the  Hermes  of  Praxiteles,  he  is  by 
no  means  in  a  state  of  internal  conflict. 
Prof.  Richard  Norton,  therefore,  is  right  in 
saying,  that  "the  mind  is  actively  at  work," 
but  he  is  hinting  a  little  too  far  in  the  oppo- 
site direction,  when  he  adds,  "and  in  no 
mood  of  quiet  reflection. ' ' 

If  Skopas,  sometimes  at  least,  differed 
from  Praxiteles  in  the  conception  of  his 
work,  Lysippos,  of  whom  we  shall  now 
speak,  is  diametrically  opposed  to  both.  In 
him  we  seem  to  find  a  revival  of  the  old 
endeavor  to  be  true  to  nature  by  bestowing 
almost  exclusive  attention  upon  the  outward 
appearance  of  the  body.  He  therefore 
worked  in  bronze,  while  his  two  famous 
predecessors  had  wrought  their  most  impor- 
tant ideas  into  marble.  Unlike  them  he  was 
not  gentle  born,  but  began  life  as  a  work- 
ing-man in  a  brass  foundry.  Genius,  how- 
ever, cannot  be  hid,  and  soon  he  worked 
himself  up,  was  appointed  court  sculptor  to 
Alexander  the  Great,  and  enjoyed  as  great 
a  reputation  with  his  contemporaries  and 
subsequent  generations  as  any  of  the  famous 
Greek  artists.  For  us  he  is  decidedly  less 
interesting.  We  do  not  possess  a  single 


original  by  his  hand,  not  even  any  superior 
replicas,  and  must  judge  him,  therefore, 
entirely  by  poor  Roman  copies  and  those 
few  passages  in  literature  which  have  refer- 
ence to  him.  His  work  does  not  appear 
nearly  so  spontaneous,  and  we  are  in  conse- 
quence inclined  to  call  him  an  Academician. 
Like  Polykleitos  a  century  earlier,  he 
bestowed  his  attention  upon  the  proportions 
of  the  human  body,  and  one  of  his  statues 
embodying  the  results  is  extant  in  a  Roman 
copy  now  in  the  Vatican  Museum  at  Rome. 


THE   APOXYOMENOS   AFTER    LYSIPPOS.      ROME. 

Polykleitos,  it  seemed,  had  arrived  at  his 
conclusions  by  taking  a  composite  picture, 
as  it  were,  of  humankind,  /.  e.,  by  taking 
the  average  measurements  of  all  people. 
Lysippos  had  not  been  inattentive  to  the 
beautiful  results  which  Skopas  and  Praxi- 
teles had  attained  by  wise  selection.  He 
saw  that  among  the  people  about  him  there 
were  many  who  had  no  claim  on  beauty  at 
all.  Excluding  these  from  his  list,  he  took 
the  average  measurements  only  of  the  best 
specimens,  and  arrived,  therefore,  at  an 


264 


SCULPTURE: 


entirely  different  result  from  Polykleitos. 
His  figures  are  taller  and  of  a  less  stocky 
build,  with  smaller  heads  and  longer  limbs. 
The  statue  referred  to  above,  which  illus- 
trates these  new  proportions,  is  the  figure 
of  an  athlete  who  in  Greek  fashion  is  scrap- 
ing the  oil  from  his  body  after  a  contest. 
The  original  is  lost.  This  is  a  copy  in  mar- 
ble, and  therefore  shows  all  the  defects  of 
the  change.  We  must,  therefore,  of  course 
not  hold  Lysippos  responsible  for  the  lack 
of  modeling  on  the  figure  and  the  cold  and 
stony  appearance  of  the  limbs  and  trunk. 

It  has  already  been  mentioned  that  Alex- 
ander appointed  Lysippos  court  sculptor. 
His  preference  for  our  artist  was  so  great 
that  he  would  not  allow  any  other  sculptor 
to  carve  his  image,  because,  as  the  literary 
sources  say,  Lysippos  alone  knew  how  to 
catch  both  the  sentimental  gaze  of  the  royal 
eyes  and  the  otherwise  leonine  appearance 
of  the  face  of  Alexander.  It  certainly  was 
a  most  remarkable  combination  of  aspects 
in  one  face,  and  well  might  have  defied  the 
endeavors  of  any  artisi.  That  Lysippos 
succeeded  in  catching  the  one  without  los- 
ing the  other  is  strong  testimony  for  his 
skill,  and  makes  us  regret  the  more  that  we 
do  not  possess  a  single  work  by  his  own 
hand,  or  even  a  copy  of  one  by  an  inspired 
workman. 

There  are  several  heads  extant  in  many 
museums  which  go  under  the  name  of 
"Head  of  Alexander";  none  of  them,  how- 
ever, can  be  traced  to  Lysippos  with  any 
amount  of  certainty.  An  excellent  speci- 
men may  be  seen  in  the  Boston  Museum. 


HELLENISTIC    SCULPTURE. (12) 
When  Alexander  the  Great  died 
suddenly  in  Babylon  in  323  B.  C., 
the  vast    empire,   which   he   had 
welded  together  by  fierce  conquests  and  his 
own  powerful  personality,  went  to  pieces  as 
quickly  as  it   had  been  made.     It  did  not 
separate,  as  one  might  have  expected,  into 
the    several   states   and    monarchies  which 
had   been   obliterated   by   the    Macedonian 
king,  but  was  divided  largely  into  new  and 
independent   kingdoms    under   the   rule   of 


some  of  Alexander's  ablest  generals.  The 
one  supremely  victorious  force  which  had 
accompanied  Alexander  on  his  marches  to 
the  East  was  Greek  education  and  Greek 
thought,  which  after  the  death  of  Alexander 
continued  paramount  in  the  more  powerful 
of  the  new  dynasties.  We  can  even  go  so 
far  as  to  say  that  only  those  kingdoms — 
Egypt,  Pergamon,  Syria,  and  Macedonia — 
eventually  had  an  active  part  in  the  shaping 
of  the  world's  history  in  which  Greek  man- 
ners had  entirely  routed  the  customs  of  the 
original  inhabitants.  The  entire  period, 
therefore,  which  was  inaugurated  by  Alex- 
ander was  the  period  when  Greek  idealism 
began  to  spread  over  the  then  known  world. 

The  Greeks  called  themselves  Hellenes, 
and  this  period,  therefore,  is  known  in  his- 
tory as  the  Hellenistic  age,  /'.  e. ,  the  age 
when  the  world  was  "Hellenized. "  By 
analogy  the  art  of  this  period  also  used  to 
be  called  Hellenistic,  a  term  which  most 
scholars  to-day  avoid  because  it  is  believed 
to  be  misleading.  If  we  look  upon  the  art 
of  the  fifth  and  fourth  centuries  as  the  only 
typically  Greek,  we  must  indeed  confess 
that  the  art  which  followed  upon  Alexander 
had  lost  much  of  what  we  have  come  to  ad- 
mire most  in  Greek  art,  that  is  to  say,  its 
simplicity  and  the  purity  of  conception 
which  does  not  covet  admiration.  On  the 
other  hand,  that  art  still  continued  to  be  dis- 
tinctly Greek,  for  we  can  account  for  almost 
every  one  of  its  manifestations  by  some  of 
the  inherent  qualities  with  which  we  have 
become  familiar  in  our  study  so  far.  It 
was  therefore  most  certainly  Greek,  although 
very  different  from  the  Parthenon  sculptures 
or  the  works  of  Praxiteles. 

But  had  not  Greek  thought  and  civiliza- 
tion also  changed?  They  surely  were  not 
the  same  as  in  the  times  of  Peisistratos,  or 
Perikles,  or  Demosthenes,  and  yet  they  were 
Greek.  Under  contact  with  other  nations 
and  under  the  searchlight  of  philosophical 
discussion,  the  Greek  view  of  life  had  gradu- 
ally become  reformed.  If  scholars,  never- 
theless, by  common  consent  call  this  period 
the  Hellenistic  age  because  the  thoughts 
permeating  the  entire  world  were  the  crea- 
tions of  the  Greek  mind,  we  may  equally  well 
call  its  art  Hellenistic.  It  was,  moreover — 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


265 


and  this  is  of  the  greatest  importance — prac- 
ticed almost  exclusively  by  Greeks,  who,  if 
not  Greeks  by  birth  in  every  instance,  were 
such  at  least  by  their  education  and  attain- 
ments. 

With  these  facts  clear  in  our  mind,  we 
shall  be  better  able  to  appreciate  the  art  of 
this  so-called  Hellenistic  age.  Writers 
have  often  called  it  the  period  of  deca- 
dence ;  but  nothing  could  be  more  mistaken. 
It  rather  exhibits  the  autumn  days  of  art 
when  the  ripe  fruit,  with  characteristic  full- 
ness, commands  our  admiration,  and  the 
variety  of  changing  foliage  tries  to  crowd 
from  our  memory  the  pleasure  which  we 
once  had  in  the  fresh  verdure  of  the  sprout- 
ing shoots.  But  autumn  surely  is  not  a 
season  of  decadence,  nor  the  red-cheeked 
apple  indicative  of  the  declining  power  of 
nature  as  compared  with  the  bright  blossom 
in  the  spring.  There  are  no  more  perfect 
days  in  the  entire  round  of  the  year  than 
those  crisp,  sunny  days  of  what  we  call  the 
Indian  summer.  They  are  entirely  self- 
sufficient,  and  neither  full  of  promise  for 
the  future  nor  teeming  with  the  reminis- 
cences of  the  past.  It  is  to  them  we  may 
best  compare  the  chief  treasures  which  have 
been  preserved  to  us  from  Hellenistic  art. 

One  of  the  most  generally  admired  statues 
of  this  period  is  the  Aphrodite  of  Melos, 
more  widely  but  less  properly  known  as  the 
Venus  de  Milo,  because  first  known  through 
French  publications.  She  was  discovered 
in  1820  in  a  subterranean  cave,  on  the  island 
of  Melos,  and  eventually  found  her  way  into 
the  Louvre  in  Paris.  She  is  so  well  known 
that  it  did  not  seem  necessary  to  give  as 
large  an  illustration  of  her  as  her  worth  de- 
manded, and  she  has  been  so  well  described 
by  the  gifted  pens  of  masters  that  the  reader 
will  be  glad  to  hear  what  one  of  them,  Mr. 
Edward  Robinson,  has  said. 

"The  superb  moulding  and  majestic  pro- 
portions indicate  that  the  figure  is  not  only 
ideal,  but  one  of  the  greater  divinities. 
Among  these  the  disclosure  of  the  form 
by  the  fallen  drapery  is  characteristic  of 
the  goddess  of  love,  while  the  dignity  of 
the  bearing  and  the  nobility  of  the  counte- 
nance distinguish  Aphrodite  Urania,  the 
heavenly  Venus,  from  the  vulgar  goddess 


THE    APHRODITE    OF    MELOS.      PARIS. 


of  the  same  name.  The  inspirer  of  the 
highest  form  of  love,  she  is  herself  ex- 
quisitely lovely,  yet  with  no  suggestion  of 
sensuality  in  her  beauty.  The  splendor  of 
her  form  is  betrayed  with  neither  shame 
nor  coquetry.  And  the  face  is  as  pure  as  it 
is  beautiful,  proud,  yet  sympathetic,  com- 
bining in  its  expression  the  tenderness  of 
the  woman  with  the  majesty  of  the  goddess. 
.  .  .  The  technique*  of  this  statue  offers 
such  unique  and  apparently  contradictory 
characteristics  that  the  attempt  to  determine 
its  date  by  the  usual  methods  has  resulted  in 
the  widest  divergence  among  writers  on  the 
subject.  The  treatment  of  the  drapery,  for 
example,  is  so  like  that  of  the  Parthenon 
statues  that,  had  we  no  other  data,  we 
might  believe  it  a  work  of  the  same  period, 
as,  indeed,  some  authorities  have  done. 
But  the  expression  of  subtle  distinctions  of 
character  in  the  face,  such  as  we  see  here,  is 
foreign  to  the  sculpture  of  the  fifth  century, 
and  belongs  to  the  period  of  Praxiteles  and 
Skopas,  when  it  became  a  favorite  problem 
among  artists.  Moreover,  so  far  as  we  now 


266 


SCULPTURE: 


know,  until  the  early  part  of  the  fourth 
century,  Aphrodite  was  never  represented 
with  the  upper  half  of  her  figure  nude,  but 
always  full  draped.  For  these  reasons  the 
first  half  of  the  fourth  century  would  seem 
the  most  probable  date  for  the  statue. 
Here  again,  however,  we  are  met  by  a  diffi- 
culty, as  the  proportion  of  the  head  to  the 
body  is  distinctly  smaller  than  in  the  other 
works  of  that  epoch,  but  quite  in  accordance 
with  the  style  of  a  considerably  later 
period."  Mr.  Robinson  then  goes  on  to 
state  that  it  is  a  very  difficult  task  to  assign 
a  definite  date  to  this  statue  or  to  decide  the 
question  whether  we  see  in  it  an  original 
or  an  inspired  copy. 

Mr.  Robinson  is  right,  and  where  men  of 
his  learning  fail  to  come  to  absolute  con- 
clusions it  would  be  presumptive  to  advance 
here  a  new  theory  with  any  prospect  of  hav- 
ing it  universally  accepted.  One  thing, 
however,  is  sure,  and  that  is  that  many  of 
the  people  who  have  studied  Greek  art  and 
know  it,  and  by  thus  knowing  it  seem  to 
understand  in  the  statues  the  language  of 
the  old  masters,  believe  they  are  listening 
to  a  very  different  voice  when  they  are 
studying  the  Aphrodite  of  Melos  from  what 
they  hear,  for  instance,  in  the  Parthenon 
sculptures  or  in  any  of  the  works  of  Praxi- 
teles. These  are  grand,  they  are  beautiful, 
they  are  young  and  vigorous,  and  though 
we  certainly  do  not  like  to  have  them  any 
different  from  what  they  are,  they  are  so 
full  of  buoyant  possibilities,  that  it  seems 
the  artist  could  have  expressed  his  thought 
equally  as  well  in  a  great  many  other  ways. 
He  has  just  happened  to  hit  upon  this  way, 
and  it  is  due  to  his  feeling  for  grace  and 
beauty  that  the  result  is  so  satisfactory. 
Our  feelings  in  looking  at  the  Aphrodite  are 
very  different.  Here  we  find  the  clear  and 
definite  expression  of  one  perfect  thought 
which  had  to  take  shape  just  thus,  and  could 
not  be  otherwise  expressed.  Such  pre- 
cision of  execution,  such  pregnancy  of 
thought,  is  not  found  in  art  either  in  the 
fifth  or  the  fourth  century  before  Christ. 

Look  at  the  blossom  in  the  spring  and  its 
tender  leaves  accepting  whatever  position 
the  breeze  assigns  to  them.  And  then  take 
up  the  full-grown  fruit  in  the  autumn,  with 


its  precious  precision  of  outline.  It  has 
entirely  lost  the  power  of  easy  change  of 
form.  The  blossom  can  be  blown  to  look 
like  a  disk  or  a  cup,  and  remain  the  same 
blossom  always,  but  the  fruit  has  no  longer 
the  gift  of  varying  its  shape  at  will.  The 
precision,  then,  in  the  expression  of  thought, 
the  impossibility  of  having  it  expressed  in 
any  other  way,  is  characteristic  as  well  of 
the  autumn  days  of  nature  as  of  art;  and 
this  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  we  have  men- 
tioned the  Aphrodite  of  Melos  as  a  work 
rather  of  the  Hellenistic  age  than  of  any 
other  period. 


H 


ELLENISTIC      SCULPTURE.— 
Continued, 


We  may  couple  with  the  Aphro- 
dite of  Melos  another  work  which, 
though  the  very  opposite  of  it  in  several  re- 
spects, nevertheless  exhibits  many  of  the 
same  characteristics.  The  Nike  of  Samo- 
thrace  down  to  our  days  tells  the  story  of  a 
victory  which  Demetrios  of  Macedonia  won 
over  the  Egyptian  fleet  in  306  B.  C.  To 
commemorate  it  he  used  the  best  talent 
available  to  erect  a  monument  on  the  island 
of  Samothrace.  On  the  prow  of  a  ship,  Nike, 
the  goddess  of  successful  battles,  seems  to 
be  hurrying  onward.  She  sounds  the  fan- 
fare of  victory,  and  carries  a  pennant-staff 
in  her  lowered  left  arm.  (See  the  cut,  p. 
234)  The  figure  was  discovered  in  1863. 
She  now  stands  at  the  head  of  the  grand 
staircase  in  the  Louvre,  and  though  head 
and  arms  are  broken  and  lost,  she  never 
fails  to  exert  a  powerful  influence  on  all  who 
see  her.  Space  is  nothing  to  her,  easily  she 
glides  through  it  assisted  by  her  wings ;  the 
breeze  is  playing  with  her  drapery  and 
pressing  against  her  body.  The  head  is 
gone,  but  who  can  fail  to  see  in  the  mag- 
nificent breasts  and  on  the  beautiful 
abdomen  the  hilarious  joy  with  which  the 
swift  motion  through  the  air  has  imbued 
her?  If  we  would  fully  appreciate  the  fig- 
ure, we  must  revive  within  us  our  memories 
of  those  glorious  sensations  we  have  felt  at 
similar  swift  motions  through  space  either 
on  horseback,  or,  best  of  all,  standing  on 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


267 


the  bow  of  an  ocean  steamer  facing  the 
breezes  of  the  sea.  The  world  with  its  little 
cares  disappeared,  we  seemed  to  grow  out 
of  ourselves,  we  were  strong  and  gladly 
listened  to  the  voice  which  told  us  that  the 
impossible  did  not  exist.  Now  let  us  look 
again  at  the  statue.  In  every  line  we  can 
read  what  we  ourselves  have  felt.  She 
carries  us  on,  and  we  know  that  her  kind 
spirit  of  victory  will  be  propitious  to  our 
endeavors  if  we  retain  our  noble  ideals  and 
strength  of  will. 

Of  the  many  works  which  scholars  by 
mutual  agreement  assign  to  the  period 
under  discussion  none  perhaps  are  better 
known  than  the  Apollo  of  the  Belvedere 
Gallery  in  the  Vatican  in  Rome  (See  the  cut, 
p.  27),  and  the  Artemis  of  Versailles,  now 
in  the  Louvre,  Paris,  but  none  are  more 
habitually  misunderstood.  They  are  mas- 
terpieces, and  have  received  tribute  as  such 
by  admiring  crowds  ever  since  they  became 
generally  known  about  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. Their  names  were  household  words 
no  less  with  our  grandfathers  than  with  us, 
and  when,  at  the  end  of  the  last  century,  peo- 
ple began  to  be  again  interested  in  Greek 
art  after  a  long  neglect  of  it,  there  were  no 
other  statues  in  existence  that  could  be 
called  their  equal.  Excavations  in  Greece 
had  not  yet  yielded  the  treasures  of  the  best 
periods.  No  wonder,  therefore,  that  the 
admiration,  paid  at  first  in  just  tribute  to 
these  statues,  soon  exceeded  natural  bounds, 
and  that  people  in  their  yearning  to  find 
actual  embodiments  of  the  high  ideals  in 
art  which  the  Greek  studies  began  to  teach 
them,  believed  they  saw  qualities  in  these 
statues  which  they  did  not  really  possess. 
The  supreme  divinity  of  the  Hermes  by 
Praxiteles,  for  example,  is  lacking  in  our 
Apollo.  Almost  sneeringly  he  seems  to  be 
watching  the  flight  of  an  arrow  he  has  just 
discharged.  Let  us  look  into  his  face,  study 
his  features,  and  then  analyze  our  emotions. 
They  are  hardly  of  the  nobler  sort.  And  let 
us  compare  this  Apollo  with  the  Apollo  of 
two  centuries  before.  The  Apollo  of  Tenea 
is  crude ;  he  stands  on  the  very  threshold  of 
art.  The  man  who  fashioned  him  had  little 
skill,  but  were  his  ideals  not  loftier,  and  his 
love  for  God  and  man  not  sincerer,  than 


those  of  his  later  brother  artist  who  carved 
the  Apollo  of  Belvedere? 

But  let  us  drop  comparisons.  They  are 
unfair,  and  will  never  allow  us  to  attain  to 
the  fullest  appreciation  of  anything.  They 
were  necessary  in  this  case  to  show  that  the 
still  prevailing  view  of  those  who  see  in  the 
god  of  Belvedere  the  noblest  conception  of 
Greek  art  is  mistaken.  This  statue  is  not 
the  best  creation  of  Greek  genius.  But  if  it 
is  not  the  best  in  conception,  it  is  one  of  the 
most  glorious  in  execution.  May  it  be  the 
good  fortune  of  the  reader  to  visit  Rome  and 
to  step  into  the  octangular  room  with  its  fine 
outlook  over  the  Vatican  gardens,  the  Belve- 
dere, where  the  Apollo  stands  to-day! 
"Stands,"  I  said;  "walks"  would  be  better. 
With  an  easy,  noiseless  step  this  figure  of 
ethereal  beauty  seems  to  be  gliding  by  us. 
Sunshine  is  about  him,  sunshine  is  reflected 
in  his  soft  and  elastic  body.  His  propor- 
tions seem  perfect,  though  the  legs  are 
rather  too  long  for  the 'trunk,  and  the  longer 
we  look  at  him  the  more  entirely  we  are 
drawn  under  the  spell  of  his  material 
beauty.  (The  right  hand  is  a  restoration, 
and  moreover  has  been  thrown  out  of  pro- 
portion by  the  photographic  perspective.) 
It  is  not  his  thought  nor  his  spirit  which 
kindles  ours  with  any  quickening  fire;  it 
is  his  deified  body  which  exacts  our  hom- 
age and  calls  for  our  undivided  admiration. 
The  skill  of  the  artist  was  without  limita- 
tion, and  what  he  wanted  to  create  he  has 
created  with  an  ease  and  mastery  rarely 
equaled. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  Artemis  of  Ver- 
sailles. She  is  so  much  like  the  Apollo  that 
people  have  often  believed  them  to  be 
carved  as  companion  pieces.  She,  too,  is 
walking  briskly  past  us.  She  is  the  goddess 
of  the  hunt,  and  is  just  taking  an  arrow 
from  her  quiver  to  bring  down  the  game. 
Her  figure  is  lithe  and  active,  and  of  beauti- 
ful proportions.  As  queen  of  the  -woods  she 
has  girt  up  her  garment  and  bared  her 
strong,  yet  softly  rounded  legs.  Her  skin 
is  tender,  and  where  the  breeze  blows  the 
folds  from  over  her  left  knee  we  are  pleased 
with  the  loveliness  of  her  thigh,  which  the 
garment  decently  hides,  but  which  the  mis- 
chievous winds  would  fain  reveal  to  us.  The 


268 


SCULPTURE: 


garment  itself  is  perfection.  It  is  not  a  pic- 
ture of  a  garment;  it  is  the  garment  itself. 
The  study  of  Greek  drapery  is  too  vast  a 
subject  to  be  treated  in  these  short  lectures, 
although  attention  has  been  called  to  it  sev- 
eral times.  If  the  student  once  has  caught 
its  spirit,  he  will  begin  to  understand  why 
our  modern  costume,  which  hides  the  body, 
and  neither  expresses  the  character  of  the 
wearer  nor  his  genuine  movements,  is  alto- 
gether unsatisfactory  from  the  art  stand- 
point. 


H 


ELLENISTIC  SCULPTURE.— 
Concluded.  (14) 


In  former  lectures  it  was,  though 
not  an  easy,  yet  a  possible  task,  to 
select  from  the  wealth  of  material  exempli- 
fying the  several  periods  a  few  pieces  by 
means  of  which  we  could  trace  the  develop- 
ment of  art.  This  is  now  hardly  possible. 
Art  has  developed.  The  skill  of  the  artist 
is  at  its  highest.  Nothing  is  too  difficult, 
and  a  variety  of  subjects  is  treated  which 
defies  enumeration.  On  the  other  hand, 
fortunately,  it  is  no  longer  necessary  to 
mention  or  describe  all  the  most  important 
works:  for  if  we  have  followed  the  precept 
of  not  only  looking  at  the  statues  but  study- 
ing them,  and  of  constantly  looking  also  at 
living  people  and  of  studying  them  too,  we 
are  ready  by  this  time  to  draw  our  own  con- 
clusions. Let  us  test  our  capacity 

Our  illustration  shows  the  famous  Laokoon 
group.  (See  cut,  p.  134.)  Laokoon  was  a 
seer  who  had  seen  too  much,  and  therefore, 
together  with  his  sons,  was  killed  by  snakes 
which  the  gods  had  sent,  that  the  people 
might  stand  in  awe  of  fate  and  distrust  their 
seer.  The  subject  is  fearful:  a  pious  man, 
who  has  done  his  duty,  is  suffering  from  the 
jealousy  of  the  gods  whom  he  has  served 
faithfully;  and  all  this  only  because  he  has 
warned  the  people  whom  a  few  of  the  gods 
have  decided  to  destroy.  No  wonder  that 
Plato  and  other  Greek  men  of  lofty  ideas 
condemned  stories  like  these,  and  would 
have  the  poets  who  told  them  banished  from 
the  city.  But  we  know  from  experience 
that  the  most  grewsome  stories  are  the 


surest  to  live  long  and  win  popularity.  The 
Laokoon  myth  has  not  been  forgotten  to  our 
day,  but  art  fortunately  has  not  often  repre- 
sented it. 

Professor  Overbeck  once  said  that  we  must 
distinguish  two  kinds  of  beauty  in  a  work  of 
art:  the  beauty  of  the  idea,  and  the  beauty 
of  the  execution.  How  is  it  in  our  group? 
Can  we  speak  of  its  beauty  of  idea?  Can 
we  look  at  it  and  come  under  the  suggestive 
spell  of  a  noble  thought?  Are  we  better 
men  and  women  for  knowing  this  Laokoon, 
as  we  are  for  having  studied  the  "Fates" 
from  the  east  pediment  of  the  Parthenon? 
The  reader  may  answer  the  question  himself. 

The  execution  of  the  group  is  a  marvel  of 
skill  and  precision.  We  are  not  wrong  if 
we  admire  it,  but  we  surely  cannot  agree 
with  those  who,  in  the  joy  over  finding  such 
perfection  and  in  their  ignorance  of  the  best 
Greek  art,  called  the  Laokoon  one  of  the 
finest  works  of  art  ever  created.  It  seems 
to  be  unfortunately  true  that  the  artists  of 
the  Hellenistic  age,  who  were  masters  in 
skill,  did  not  always  select  the  worthiest 
subjects,  nor  were  men  of  the  loftiest  ideas. 
To  attain  to  beauty  of  execution  seems  to 
have  been  their  chief  aim,  and  in  this  they 
have  been  extremely  successful.  But  it  can- 
not be  denied  that  often  their  creations  were 
also  sublime  from  the  other  point  of  view. 

Our  illustration  of  a  Niobid,  for  instance, 
shows  a  figure  from  a  large  group  which 
was  very  famous  in  antiquity,  and  which 
sometimes  is  assigned  to  the  fourth  century, 
but  more  likely  belongs  to  the  Hellenistic 
age.  The  gods  have  decided  to  punish  the 
overbearing  pride  and  insolence  of  Niobe, 
who,  with  her  children,  falls  under  their  just 
arrows.  Involuntarily  we  recall  the  decla- 
ration by  our  God  of  himself  as  "visiting  the 
iniquity  of  the  fathers  upon  the  children, 
upon  the  third  and  upon  the  fourth  genera- 
tion of  them  that  hate  me."  The  figure 
shown  on  p.  269  is  one  of  the  daughters  of 
Niobe,  who,  as  destruction  befalls  the  family, 
is  try  ing  to  escape.  But  where  can  she  turn. 
The  gods  are  everywhere.  The  head  and 
arms  are  broken,  but  the  fluttering  drapery 
tells  the  story  of  agony  and  hope  in  spite  of 
hopeless  doom.  We  pity  her,  but  we  can- 
not chide  the  gods,  although  we  know  that 


A    NIOBID.       ROME. 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


271 


soon  this  girl  will  fall  as  her  sister  has 
fallen,  who  in  another  group  is  expiring  on 
the  knee  of  her  brother.  Forgetful  of  self, 
he  still  holds  up  his  garment  in  the  vain 
hope  of  saving  his  sister's  life.  And  in  an- 
other group  we  see  the  youngest  daughter, 
who  has  sought  refuge  in  her  mother's  lap. 
Both  mother  and  daughter  must  die.  Can 
we  still  doubt  that  nothing  would  be  more 
perverse  than  to  call  this  art  decadent?  Are 
we  not  better  for  knowing  this  group?  Is 
our  resolve  not  stronger  to  live  pure  and 
upright  lives,  if  for  no  other  purpose  but  to 
preserve  our  children  from  the  ruin  which 
our  folly  may  bring  upon  them? 

Our  next  illustration  shows  the  magnifi- 
cent bust  of  Zeus  found  at  Otricoli  in  Italy, 
which  at  first  used  to  be  regarded  as  copied 
from  the  Olympian  Zeus  of  Pheidias;  "but," 
as  Professor  Tarbell  writes,  "in  the  light  of 
increased  acquaintance  with  the  style  of 
Pheidias  and  his  age,  this  attribution  has 
long  been  seen  to  be  impossible.  The  origi- 
nal belongs  about  at  the  end  of  the  period 
now  under  review"  (/.  e.,  the  fourth  century) 
"or  possibly"  (we  might  say  probably) 
"still  later.  Although  only  a  copy,  the 
Otricoli  Zeus  is  the  finest  representation  we 
have  of  the  father  of  gods  and  men.  The 
predominant  expression  is  one  of  gentleness 
and  benevolence,  but  the  lofty  brow,  trans- 
versely furrowed,  tells  of  thought  and  will, 
and  the  leonine  hair  of  strength." 

Different  as  this  head  of  Zeus  may  seem 
at  first  from  the  contorted  face  of  the  Lao- 
koon,  it  is  nevertheless  modeled  in  exactly 
the  same  proportions.  The  resemblance  is 
striking,  but  curiously  enough  seems  to  have 


escaped  the  notice  of  scholars.  This  is 
probably  due  to  the  fact  that  the  head  of 
Zeus  is  colossal,  while  in  the  Laokoon  group, 
which  is  somewhat  below  life  size,  the  head 


THE    DEAD    AMAZON,    NAPLES. 


HEAD    OF    ZEUS,    FROM    OTRICOLI.       ROME. 

is  only  one  of  the  many  parts  which  call  for 
our  attention.     It  is  not  at  all  unreasonable 
to  believe  that  the  artists  of  the  group  first 
made  an  exact  though  reduced  copy  of  the 
Zeus  Otricoli  type  in  clay,  and  then  intro- 
duced on  this  clay  model  those  contorted  fea- 
tures by  means  of  which  they  wanted  to  tell 
their  story.     This  would  be  in  keeping  with 
what  we  know  of  the  technique  of  their  time. 
Among  the  different  schools  which  gained 
a  high  reputation  in  the  Hellenistic  period 
the  school  of  Pergamon  is  better  known  to 
us  than  any  other.     It 
developed    its   greatest 
activity  under  King  At- 
talos  I.  (241   to  197  B. 
C.)  and  King  Eumenes 
II.   (197    to  159  B.  C.). 
Attalos  was  a  friend  and 
admirer  of  Athens,  and 
dedicated  on  its  Acrop- 
olis   a  set   of    statues, 
some  of   which   are 
known  to  us  by  Roman 
copies.   One  of  the  most 
beautiful   is   the  figure 


272 


SCULPTURE: 


THE    DYING    GAUL.      ROME. 


of  a  dead  Amazon,  now  in  the  museum 
of  Naples.  It  is  shown  in  our  illustra- 
tion, and  although  no  reproduction  can 
do  it  justice,  the  reader  will  be  able  to 
get  an  idea  of  its  surpassing  beauty.  The 
Amazon  is  dead!  She  was  a  noble  woman 
of  graceful  appearance  and  self-control. 
We  have  not  known  her  in  life,  but  the  quiet 
way  in  which  she  has  lain  down  to  die  re- 
veals her  character  and  makes  us  love  her. 
Far  more  famous,  although  perhaps  not 
quite  so  impressive,  is  the  statue  of  the 
Dying  Gaul,  who  is  better  known  by  the 
mistaken  name  of  the  "Dying  Gladiator." 
It  is  of  him  Lord  Byron  said  that  he 

"Consents  to  death,  but  conquers  agony." 

It  is,  however,  neither  of  these  figures 
that  has  made  the  reputation  of  the  Perga- 
mean  school,  but  rather  the  great  altar  which 
Eumenes  II.  erected  in  honor  of  the  gods, 
and  of  which  large  fragments  have  recently 


been  excavated  by  the  Prussian  government. 
It  was,  as  E.  Gardner  writes,  "among  the 
chief  wonders  of  the  ancient  world,  and  so 
impressed  the  early  Christians  that  it  is 
referred  to  in  the  Revelation  as  'the  throne 
of  Satan. '  It  consisted  of  a  huge  basis  more 
than  one  hundred  feet  square  on  the  top  of 
which  stood  a  colonnade  surrounding  an 
open  court,  in  which  the  altar  of  sacrifice 
itself  was  placed.  .  .  .  Two  sculptured 
friezes  decorated  this  magnificent  build- 
ing. The  chief  one  ran  around  the  basis  in 
a  continuous  composition,  .  .  .  the  smaller 
one  probably  on  the  inside  of  the  colonnade. 
.  .  .  The  great  frieze  is  over  seven  feet 
high,  so  that  its  figures  add  the  effect  of 
colossal  size  to  that  of  their  violent  action." 
It  represented  the  battle  of  Gods  and 
Giants,  and  if  we  compare  it  with  similar 
battle  scenes  of  the  fifth  or  fourMi  centuries, 
"though  we  miss  the  noble  simplicity  of  the 
great  age  we  cannot  fail  to  be  impressed 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


273 


with     the     Titanic     energy    which    surges 
through  this  stupendous  composition." 

Our  illustration  shows  one  of  the  best 
preserved  slabs  of  the  frieze.  Athena  has 
taken  hold  of  the  giant,  who  sinks  before 
her.  She  uses  no  weapon,  and  yet  he  has 
succumbed,  and  falling  receives  the  mortal 
bites  from  Athena's  snake.  The  goddess 
sweeps  on,  and  before  her  the  ground  opens 
and  "mother  Earth"  herself  implores  her  to 


tance  and  under  very  specific  surroundings. 
If  the  artist  who  designed  our  slab  had  made 
a  work  to  be  seen  at  close  range,  and  studied 
apart  from  its  architectural  setting,  he 
would  have  given  us  very  different  figures, 
we  may  be  sure.  Let  us  think,  therefore, 
of  the  frieze  as  it  was  designed,  and  we 
surely  shall  not  be  sparing  with  the  expres- 
sion of  our  praise  for  the  excellence  of  Per- 
gamean  art. 


ATHENE  GROUP  FROM  THE  ALTAR  AT  PERGAMON.   BERLIN. 


spare  the  giant,  but  she  refuses  to  listen  and 
is  already  met  by  her  constant  companion, 
Nike,  the  goddess  of  victory,  who,  flying 
through  space,  has  arrived  to  put  the  con- 
queror's wreath  of  laurel  on  her  brow. 

The  German  government  is  erecting  a 
special  building  for  the  Pergamean  finds, 
where  they  are  inserted  at  their  proper  place 
and  height  on  a  structure  which  is  built  in 
the  exact  dimensions  of  the  great  altar  at 
Pergamon.  It  is  unfair  to  judge  of  the 
frieze  anywhere  else  but  there,  and  even 
there  the  glorious  surroundings  of  the 
Asiatic  scenery  are  lacking.  The  work 
was  designed  for  a  grand  effect  at  some  dis- 


ROMAN   SCULPTURE.(i5) 
There   remains  one   word   to   be 
said   about   "Roman"    sculpture. 
Roman  sculpture  in  the  true  sense 
of    the  word  perhaps  never  existed.      The 
Romans  were  not  given  to  art,  for  the  bent 
of  their  character  lay  in  very  different  direc- 
tions.    We  are,  therefore,  not  astonished  to 
find   that   the   earliest    pieces   of    sculpture 
in    Rome    were    so   strongly  influenced    by 
Etruscan   art  that  they  are  better  treated 
under  that  head,  and  that  the  later  were  often 
hardly  anything  but  Greek  subjects  worked 
over  again  by  Greek  sculptors  in  Rome. 


274 


SCULPTURE: 


Korinth  was  taken  by  the  Romans  in  146 
B.  C.,  and  the  historians  say  that  this  event 
marked  the  end  of  the  Hellenistic  age, 
because  with  it  Greece  *had  ceased  to  be 
an  independent  state.  Art,  however,  con- 
tinued the  same,  or  at  least  in  the  same  di- 
rection; and  although  writers  often  make 
here  a  division,  calling  the  new  period  the 
"Greco-Roman,"  no  strong  differences  can 
be  established  beyond  the  fact  that  inde- 
pendent inventions  of  new  types  seem  to 
have  gradually  ceased.  The  artists,  as  they 


HEAD    OF    JtTLIUS    CAESAR.      LONDON. 


always  have  done,  and  are  doing  now, 
offered  such  ware  as  the  taste  of  the  people 
demanded;  and  since  the  people  at  large 
seemed  to  be  satisfied  with  the  reproduction 
of  old  and  famous  types,  the  artists'  guild 
was  eventually  changed  to  a  brotherhood  of 
copyists.  We  have  seen  in  the  preceding 
chapters  many  examples  of  such  Roman 
copies,  or  had  we  not  perhaps  better  say 
Greco-Roman  copies,  for  it  seems  that  these 
statues,  with  few  exceptions,  were  made  by 
native  Grsek  sculptors  who  had  removed  to 


Rome   as    artists    nowadays   flock   to  Paris 
from  all  over  the  world. 

We  should,  however,  have  a  very  one- 
sided opinion  of  these  men  if  we  were  to 
look  upon  them  as  mere  copyists.  Some  of 
them,  as  their  works  attest,  were  men  of 
genius.  There  is,  for  instance,  a  torso  (see 
the  cut,  p.  1 8)  in  the  Vatican  made  by  one 
Apollonios,  a  work  of  such  supreme  beauty 
and  exquisite  workmanship  that  it  calls  for 
our  undivided  approval  and  admiration.  It  • 
was  probably  men  of  the  stamp  of  Apollonios 
who  were  employed  by  the  noble  Romans  to 
work  their  portraits  in  stone.  Our  museums 
are  full  of  Roman  portrait  heads,  many  of 
which  are  far  ahead  of  anything  that  we  are 
accustomed  to  receive  to-day  from  our 
sculptors  when  we  order  the  portrait  of  one 
of  our  national  heroes. 

Our  illustration  gives  the  profile  view  of 
the  bust  of  Julius  Caesar  in  the  British 
Museum.  We  believe  we  see  the  man  him- 
self, and  whatever  view  we  have  had  of  him 
so  far,  from  now  on  his  achievements  and 
his  tragic  end  will  mean  much  more  to  us. 
Nothing,  perhaps,  will  better  help  the  stu- 
dent to  appreciate  the  exquisite  excellence 
of  this  head  than  a  comparison  of  it  with 
the  head  of  Perikles  shown  on  page  133. 
There  we  see  elimination  and  abstraction, 
here  precision  and  careful  reproduction  of  the 
lines  of  nature,  coupled  with  a  true  sense  for 
beauty,  seen  in  the  excellent  workmanship. 

Portraiture  was  the  highest  attainment  of 
Roman  art,  although  considerable  beauty 
was  also  achieved  in  triumphal  arches. 
Their  treatment  belongs  more  properly 
under  the  head  of  architecture.  They  were, 
however,  often  covered  with  sculpture,  and, 
therefore,  cannot  be  passed  by  here  without 
mention.  Our  illustration  gives  a  scene 
from  the  decoration  of  the  arch  of  Trajan  at 
Beneventum  in  Italy.  We  see  in  it  a 
peculiar  mixture:  the  stateliness  of  the 
woman,  her  conception,  and,  to  a  certain 
extent,  her  execution  carry  us  back  to  the 
suggestive  art  of  the  fifth  and  early  fourth 
centuries;  while  the  man  with  the  little  boy 
on  his  shoulders  is  so  realistic  that  we  can- 
not possibly  forget  that  this  is  a  creation  of 
the  Roman  age. 

We  have  followed  Greek  sculpture  from 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


275 


its  beginning  through  its  stages  of  perfection 
to  the  time  when  it  is  so  fused  with  the 
Roman  traditions  that  it  may  almost  be 
called  a  Roman  art.  Different  phases  of 
this  Greek  art  will  appeal  to  different  ones 
of  us  as  the  best,  but  we  shall  have  to  con- 
fess that  all  are  good.  This  is  the  charm  of 
Greek  sculpture,  that,  though  it  changes,  it 
does  not  decline,  because  it  is  securely 
founded  on  truthfulness  and  righteousness. 
In  many  Greek  works,  to  be  sure,  we  may 
discover,  as  Mr.  Ruskin  tells  us,  "some 


appreciation  of  a  work  of  art  is  impossible. 
If  we,  therefore,  would  know  and  best  enjoy 
Greek  sculpture,  we  must  cultivate  within 
us  the  love  of  all  that  God  has  created.  Let 
us  love  nature  and  man,  not  only  his  soul 
but  also  his  body,  for  it  is  God  who  has 
created  both.  The  body  is  beautiful,  and 
surely  not  deserving  of  the  contempt  with 
which  we  treat  it  and  of  the  forgetfulness  of 
its  grace  which  makes  us  hide  it,  until  it  has 
come  to  pass  that  we  must  look  at  statues  and 
pictures  if  we  would  know  how  it  is  made. 


SCENE  FROM  THE  ARCH  OF  TRAJAN  AT  KENEVENTUM. 


things  that  are  still  false  or  fanciful,  but 
whatever  in  them  is  false  or  fanciful  is  not 
the  Greek  part  of  it — it  is  the  Phoenician  or 
Egyptian  or  Pelasgian  part,"  or,  we  may 
add,  the  Asiatic  or  Roman  part. 

Greek  art  itself  is  substantially  what  art 
always  ought  to  be,  that  is,  in  Mr.  Ruskin's 
language,  "the  expression  of  man's  delight 
in  God's  work."  Without  this  delight  there 
cannot  be  any  noble  expression  of  thought 
in  sculpture,  and  without  it  the  keenest 


Nothing  is  too  mean  in  God's  world,  noth- 
ing too  low,  but  what  the  lover  of  beauty 
may  enjoy.  The  more  we  love  and  the 
more  we  feel,  the  better  we  shall  appreciate 
Greek  art. 

May  we  not  carry  away  from  our  com- 
mon study  a  heart  that  is  resolved  to  love 
and  to  enjoy!  Let  us  enter  into  the  true 
attitude  of  art ;  and  if  we  cannot  carve  or 
use  the  brush,  we  will,  at  least  by  our  every 
act,  express  our  "delight  in  God's  work." 


LUNETTE    BY    LUCA    DELLA    ROBBIA.        FLORENCE. 


Sculpture:  Medieval,  Renaissance  and  Decadence. 


BY 


WILLIAM  ORDWAY  PARTRIDGE, 


SCULPTOR,    NEW    YORK. 


CHRISTIAN  AND  BYZAN- 
TINE SCULPTURE.  (16) 

That  period  of  art  which  we  desig- 
nate by  the  term  medieval  may  be 
said  to  be  confined  to  the  centuries  450-1500. 
This  period  has  been  preceded  by  the  classi- 
cal and  semi-classical  art  epochs,  and  was 
followed  by  the  Renaissance  movement, 
which  was  coincident  with  the  revival  of 
learning.  It  is  full  of  Christian  feeling,  and 
excels  in  decorative  effects.  More  espe- 
cially did  it  shine  in  the  minor  arts  <;f  the 
illumination  of  manuscripts,  and  in  the  fash- 
ioning into  artistic  forms  of  the  necessary 
utensils  of  life. 

In  that  branch  of  art  which  is  known  as 
architecture  the  medieval  period  was  par- 


ticularly  fruitful.  It  produced  the  finest 
specimens  of  ecclesiastical  architecture  the 
world  has  ever  seen.  As  the  church  or  the 
cathedral  of  that  time  was  the  expression  of 
the  highest  feelings  of  the  people,  it  fol- 
lowed that  in  its  architecture  were  sym- 
bolized all  the  artistic  ideals  of  the  time.  It 
was  due  to  this  that  the  medieval  period 
found  its  first  expression  in  the  curious 
carvings  and  bas-reliefs  found  upon  the 
lunettes  and  the  side-posts  of  the  doors, 
which  represented  personages  or  scenes 
from  Holy  Writ,  together  with  every  variety 
of  animal  form,  both  in  relief  and  the  round. 
In  the  fourth  century,  under  the  rule  of 
Constantine's  successors,  plastic  arts  in  the 
Roman  world  had  reached  the  lowest  point 
of  degradation  to  which  they  ever  fell. 


276 


SCULPTURE:  MEDIEVAL,  RENAISSANCE  AND  DECADENCE. 


277 


This  period  immediately  preceded  the  time 
which  we  are  considering,  and  while  the 
pagan  sculpture  of  that  era  was  coarse  in 
workmanship,  feeble  in  design,  and  without 
expression  or  life,  a  large  amount  of  sculp- 
ture was  produced  by  Christian  workmen, 
which,  while  of  no  high  merit,  was  far 
superior  to  the  pagan  product.  The  faith 
which  had  inspired  the  golden  age  of  pagan 
art  had  died,  and  art  had  expired  with  it. 
It  belonged  to  the  efforts  of  the  Christian 
workmen  of  the  time  to  revive  the  lost  skill, 
and  while  the  workmen  of  the  Catacombs 
show  no  special  knowledge  of  form  or  skill 
in  modeling,  yet  the  living  faith  that  in- 
spired them,  and  the  subjects  with  which  it 
supplied  them,  were  sufficient  to  invest  their 
work  with  a  vigor. and  a  dramatic  force  of 
expression  that  raises  it  far  above  the  efforts 
of  the  late  classic  sculptors.  A  large  num- 
ber of  sarcophagi  are  the  chief  existing 
specimens  of  this  early  Christian  sculpture. 
They  are  richly  decorated  with  reliefs,  the 
subjects  of  which  are  usually  scenes  from 
the  Old  and  New  Testaments. 

In  the  fifth  century  other  plastic  works 
similar  in  style  were  still  produced  in  Italy, 
especially  reliefs  in  ivory  on  bemas  and 
episcopal  thrones.  The  finest  example  of 
this  species  of  sculpture  that  remains  to  us 
is  the  so-called  chair  of  St.  Peter,  still  pre- 
served in  Rome.  But  perhaps  the  most 
characteristic  surviving  example  of  the  work 
in  sculpture  of  the  fifth  century  is  the  series 
of  small  panel  reliefs  on  the  doors  of  the 
Church  of  St.  Sabina  on  the  Aventine  Hill 
in  Rome.  They  represent  a  succession  of 
scenes  from  Bible  history,  and  in  them  much 
of  the  old  classic  style  survives.  Although 
archaeologists  disagree  as  to  the  precise  date 
of  these  interesting  sculptures,  the  costume 
of  the  figures  offers  strong  evidence  that 
they  belong  to  the  fifth  century. 

It  is  not  easy  to  trace  the  progress  of 
sculpture,  century  by  century,  through  the 
Middle  Ages.  We  know,  broadly  speaking, 
that  Byzantium  became  in  the  main  the  seat 
and  source  of  medieval  art  soon  after  the 
transference  thither  of  the  seat  of  empire, 
and  that  the  plastic  arts  in  that  metropolis 
were,  for  a  while,  influenced  by  traces  of 
the  dull  and  lifeless  art  of  the  era  of  the 


extreme  classic  decadence.  But,  as  we  have 
already  noticed,  fresh  life  and  vigorous  con- 
ception were  soon  infused  into  the  arts  bv  a 
people  who  possessed  in  large  degree  the 
germinating  seeds  of  a  new  and  vivid 
aesthetic  development.  If  we  take  for  ex- 
ample the  bronze  statue  of  St.  Peter  in  his 
cathedral  at  Rome,  we  have  a  work  of  this 
period  which  heralds  what  was  to  come  in 
the  golden  age  of  sculpture.  Though 
classical  in  its  lines,  and  somewhat  stiff  in 


ST.    PETER,    IN   ST.    PETER'S   CATHEDRAL,    ROME. 


its  treatment,  it  breathes  a  dignity  and  force 
which  were  never  attained  by  the  mere 
copyists  of  the  classical  decadence. 

Early  in  the  sixth  century  a  school  of 
decorative  sculpture  arose  at  Byzantium 
which  produced  work  that  showed  the 
very  highest  decorative  power,  and  an 
executive  facility  of  great  spirit  and  vigor. 
The  treatment  of  foliage  on  capitals  and  on 
bands  of  ornaments,  especially  in  regard  to 
the  representation  of  the  acanthus,  that  we 
find  in  the  Church  of  St.  Sophia  at  Con- 


278 


SCULPTURE: 


stantinople,  and  in  many  other  buildings  in 
the  East,  has  never  been  surpassed  in  any 
other  school  of  purely  decorative  sculpture. 
It  is  curious,  too,  to  trace  its  origin — its 
growth  out  of  the  dull  and  meaningless 
ornamentation  which  was  used  so  largely  on 
Roman  buildings  in  the  time  of  Constan- 
tine. 

But  the  production  of  metal-work,  in 
which  early  Byzantine  art  excelled,  espe- 
cially in  the  handling  of  the  precious  metals, 
influenced  in  great  measure  its  sculpture, 
even  when  the  material  was  marble;  and 
the  adherence  of  Byzantine  workmen  to  the 
lavish  use  of  delicate  surface  ornament  was 
often  an  injury  to  the  breadth  and  simplicity 
of  their  reliefs.  For  many  centuries,  in 
fact  until  about  the  twelfth,  the  plastic  arts 
of  Byzantium,  at  least  in  the  higher  forms, 
made  little  or  no  progress.  The  influence 
of  the  Church  was  absurdly  conservative, 
and  the  clerical  suspicion  of  anything  that 
hinted  at  sensual  beauty  was  a  fetter  on  the 
imagination  of  the  artists.  Representations 
of  Christ  were,  according  to  clerical  de- 
cree, to  be  without  beauty  of  form,  and 
impiety  was  attributed  to  the  sculptor  who 
ventured  to  invest  the  Savior  with  any  of 
the  nobility  or  beauty  of  the  pagan  gods. 

Until  about  the  twelfth  century  the  nar- 
rowness of  Byzantine  art  dominated  in 
great  measure  the  art  of  the  Christian  world. 
Little  or  no  distinctiveness  can  be  found  in 
works  executed  in  even  widely  separated 
centuries.  This  was  due  undoubtedly  to 
the  dogmatic  unity  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
to  its  great  monastic  system,  with  its  con- 
stant interchange  of  craftsmen,  and  to  the 
fact  that  the  seat  of  Catholicism  was  also 
the  greatest  school  for  learning  any  branch 
of  the  great  arts. 

The  reason  for  the  scarcity  of  existing 
examples  of  plastic  art  from  the  seventh  to 
the  twelfth  century  may  perhaps  be  found 
in  the  predilection  for  the  use  of  the  precious 
metals ,  the  intrinsic  value  of  the  objects 
naturally  causing  their  early  destruction. 
One  of  the  most  important  surviving  exam- 
ples of  the  sculpture  of  the  eighth  to  the 
ninth  century  is  to  be  found  in  the  Church 
of  Friuli  near  Trieste.  It  consists  of  a 
series  of  gigantic  wall-reliefs  in  hard  stucco, 


and  affords  us,  by  its  resemblance  to  the 
reliefs  of  Theodora,  executed  some  years 
earlier  at  Ravenna,  a  very  striking  exam- 
ple of  the  almost  petrified  state  of  Byzan- 
tine art  in  the  years  from  750  to  1000  or 
later. 

To  trace  with  any  degree  of  clarity  the 
progress  of  sculpture  from  1000  to  1500,  it 
will  be  well  to  take  the  chief  countries  of 
Europe  separately  and  examine  its  history 
in  them. 


E 


NGLISH     MEDIEVAL    SCULP- 
TURE.^) 


During  the  Saxon  period,  when 
stone  buildings  were  rare,  and  even 
large  cathedrals  were  built  of  wood,  the 
plastic  arts  were  mostly  confined  to  the  use 
of  gold,  silver,  and  gilt-copper.  The 
earliest  existing  specimens  of  sculpture  ex- 
tant are  a  number  of  tall  church-yard 
crosses,  mostly  in  the  northern  provinces, 
and  apparently  the  work  of  Scandinavian 
sculptors.  They  belong  to  a  class  of  art 
which  is  not  Christian  in  its  origin,  though 
it  was  afterwards  used  for  Christian  pur- 
poses, and  so  is  thoroughly  national  in  style, 
quite  free  from  the  usual  widespread  Byzan- 
tine influence.  Of  special  interest  from 
their  early  date — probably  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury— are  two  large  stone  reliefs  now  in 
Chichester  Cathedral,  which  are  tradition- 
ally said  to  have  come  from  the  pre-Norman 
church  at  Selsey.  They  are  thoroughly 
Byzantine  in  style,  but  evidently  the  work 
of  some  very  ignorant  sculptor.  During 
the  Norman  period  sculpture  of  a  very  rude 
sort  was  used,  especially  for  the  tympanum 
reliefs  over  the  doors  of  churches.  Christ 
in  Majesty,  the  Harrowing  of  Hell,  and  St. 
George  and  the  Dragon  occur  very  fre- 
quently. Reliefs  of  the  zodiacal  signs  were 
a  common  decoration  of  the  richly-sculp- 
tured arches  of  the  twelfth  century,  and  are 
frequently  carved  with  much  power.  The 
later  sculptured  ornaments  are  very  rich  and 
spirited,  though  the  treatment  of  the  human 
figure  is  still  most  weak. 

The  best  preserved   examples   of   monu- 
mental sculpture  of  the  twelfth  century  are 


MEDIEVAL,  RENAISSANCE  AND  DECADENCE. 


279 


a  number  of  effigies  of  Knight  Templars  in 
the  round  Temple  Church  in  London.  They 
are  laboriously  cut  in  hard  Purbeck  marble, 
and  much  resemble  bronze  in  their  treat- 
ment; the  faces  are  ugly,  and  the  whole 
figures  stiff  and  heavy  in  modeling;  but 
they  are  valuable  examples  of  the  military 
costume  of  the  time,  the  armor  being  purely 
chain-mail.  Another  effigy  in  the  same 
church,  cut  in  stone  once  decorated  with 
painting,  is  a  much  finer  piece  of  sculpture 
of  about  a  century  later.  The  head,  treated 
in  an  ideal  way  with  wavy  curls,  has  much 
simple  beauty,  showing  a  great  artistic  ad- 
vance. Another  of  the  most  remarkable 
effigies  of  this  period  is  that  of  Robert,  Duke 
of  Normandy,  in  Gloucester  Cathedral, 
carved  with  much  spirit  in  oak,  and  deco- 
rated with  painting. 

Most  rapid  progress  in  all  the  arts,  espe- 
cially in  that  of  sculpture,  was  made  in  Eng- 
land in  the  second  half  of  the  thirteenth 
century  and  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  largely  under  the  patronage  of 
Henry  III.,  who  employed,  and  handsomely 
rewarded  a  large  number  of  English  artists, 
and  also  imported  others  from  Italy  and 
Spain,  though  these  foreigners  took  only  a 
secondary  position  among  the  painters  and 
sculptors  of  England.  The  end  of  the  thir- 
teenth century  was,  in  fact,  the  culmination 
of  English  art,  and  at  this  time  a  high  degree 
of  excellence  was  reached  by  purely  national 
means,  quite  equaling  and  even  surpassing 
the  general  average  of  art  on  the  Continent, 
except  perhaps  in  France.  Even  Niccola 
Pisano  could  not  have  surpassed  the  beauty 
and  technical  elegance  of  the  two  bronze 
effigies  in  Westminster  Abbey,  modeled  and 
cast  by  William  Torell,  a  goldsmith  and  citi- 
zen of  London,  shortly  before  the  year  1300. 
These  are  on  the  tombs  of  Henry  III.  and 
Queen  Eleanor,  and,  though  the  tomb  itself 
of  the  former  is  an  Italian  work  of  the 
Cosmati  school,  there  is  no  trace  of  foreign 
influence  in  the  figures.  At  this  time  por- 
trait effigies  had  come  into  use,  and  both 
figures  are  treated  in  an  ideal  way.  The 
crowned  head  of  Henry  III.,  with  noble, 
well-modeled  features,  and  crisp,  wavy 
curls,  resembles  the  conventional  royal  head 
on  English  coins  of  this  and  the  following 


centuries,  while  the  head  of  Eleanor  is  of 
remarkable,  almost  classic,  beauty,  and  of 
great  interest  as  showing  the  ideal  type  of 
the  thirteenth  century. 

In  England  purely  decorative  carving  in 
stone  reached  its  highest  point  of  excellence 
about  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century — 
rather  later,  that  is,  than  the  best  period  of 
figure  sculpture.  The  cathedrals  at  Roches- 
ter, Lichfield,  York,  Lincoln,  Exeter,  and 
many  other  ecclesiastical  buildings  in  Eng- 
land are  rich  in  examples  of  fourteenth-cen- 
tury sculpture,  used  occasionally  with  great 
profusion  and  richness  of  effect,  but  treated 
in  strict  subordination  to  the  architectural 
background, 

It  may  be  well  to  say  here  a  few  words  on 
the  technical  methods  employed  in  the  exe- 
cution of  medieval  sculpture,  which,  in  the 
main,  were  very  similar  in  England, 
France,  and  Germany.  When  bronze  was 
used,  in  England  only  for  the  use  of  royal 
persons  or  the  richer  nobles,  the  metal  was 
cast  by  the  delicate  cire-perdue  process,  and 
the  whole  surface  of  the  figure  was  then 
gilded.  At  Limoges,  in  France,  a  large 
number  of  sepulchral  effigies  were  pro- 
duced, especially  between  1300  and  1400, 
and  exported  to  distant  places.  These  were 
not  cast,  but  were  made  of  hammered 
(repoussd}  plates  of  copper,  nailed  to  a 
wooden  core,  and  richly  decorated  with 
champlevt  enamels  in  various  bright  colors, 
applied  over  the  whole  surface.  In  order  to 
give  additional  richness,  this  external  sculp- 
ture was  covered  with  a  thin  skin  of  gesso, 
or  fine  plaster  mixed  with  size;  on  this, 
while  still  soft,  and  over  the  drapery  and 
other  accessories,  very  delicate  and  minute 
patterns  were  stamped  with  wooden  dies  and 
upon  this  the  gold  and  colors  were  applied ; 
thus  the  gaudiness  and  monotony  of  flat 
smooth  surfaces  covered  with  gilding  or 
bright  colors  were  avoided.  Another  ma- 
terial much  used  by  medieval  sculptors  was 
wood,  though  from  its  perishable  nature 
comparatively  few  examples  survive;  the 
best  specimen  being  the  figure  of  George  de 
Cantelupe  in  Abergavenny  Church.  This 
was  decorated  with  gesso  reliefs,  gilt  and 
colored  in  the  same  way  as  the  stone 
effigies. 


280 


SCULPTURE: 


F 


RENCH    MEDIEVAL    SCULP- 
TURE. (18) 


During  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth 
centuries  the  sculpture  of  France 
was,  on  the  whole,  the  finest  in  the  world, 
and  was  there  used  in  the  greatest  profusion. 
The  facades  of  large  cathedrals  were  com- 
pletely covered  with  sculptured  reliefs  and 
thick-set  rows  of  statues  in  niches.  The 
whole  of  the  front  was  frequently  one  huge 
composition  of  statuary,  with  only  sufficient 
architectural  work  to  form  a  background  and 
frame  for  the  sculptured  figures.  Even  the 
shafts  of  the  doorways  and  other  architec- 
tural accessories  were  covered  with  minute 
sculptural  decorations,  the  motives  of  which 
were  often,  especially  during  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury, obviously  devised  from  the  metal  work 
of  shrines  and  reliquaries  studded  with  rows 
of  jewels.  The  sculptured  doors  of  the  north 
and  south  aisles  of  Bourges  Cathedral  are 
fine  examples  of  the  ait  of  the  end  of  the 
twelfth  century,  and  so  were  the  west  doors 
of  Notre  Dame  in  Paris,  until  they  were 
hopelessly  injured  by  "restoration."  The 
early  sculpture  at  Bourges  is  specially  inter- 
esting from  the  existence  in  many  parts  of 
its  original  colored  decoration. 

In  France,  as  in  England,  the  thirteenth 
century  was  the  golden  age  of  sculpture. 
While  still  keeping  its  early  dignity,  and 
subordination  to  its  architectural  setting, 
the  sculpture  reached  a  very  high  degree  of 
graceful  finish  and  even  sensuous  beauty. 
Nothing  could  surpass  the  loveliness  of  the 
angel  statues  around  the  Sainte  Chapelle  of 
Paris,  and  even  the  earlier  work  on  the 
facade  of  Laon  Cathedral  is  full  of  grace  and 
beauty.  Amiens  Cathedral  is  especially  rich 
in  sculpture  of  this  date, — as,  for  example, 
the  noble  and  majestic  statues  of  Christ  and 
the  Apostles  at  the  west  end;  and  the  sculp- 
ture on  the  south  transept  of  about  1260-70, 
of  more  developed  style,  and  remarkable  for 
dignity  combined  with  soft  beauty.  (See 
the  cut,  p.  128.)  The  noble  row  of  kings  on 
the  west  end  of  Notre  Dame  at  Paris  has, 
like  the  earlier  sculpture,  been  ruined  by 
"restoration,"  which  has  robbed  the  statues 
of  both  their  spirit  and  their  vigor.  (See 
the  cut,  p.  50.) 


To  the  latter  years  of  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury belong  the  magnificent  statues  and 
reliefs  around  the  three  great  western  door- 
ways of  the  same  church,  among  which  are 
no  less  than  thirty-four  life-sized  figures. 
On  the  whole,  the  single  statues  throughout 
this  period  are  finer  than  the  reliefs  with 
many  figures.  Some  of  the  statues  of  the 
Virgin  and  the  Child  are  of  extraordinary 
beauty,  in  spite  of  their  being  often  treated 
with  a  certain  mannerism — a  curved  pose  of 
the  body,  which  appears  to  have  been  copied 
from  ivory  statuettes  in  which  the  figure 
followed  the  curve  of  the  elephant's  tusk. 
The  north  transept  at  Rheims  is  no  less 
rich;  the  central  statue  of  Christ  is  a  work 
of  much  beauty  and  grace  of  form;  and 
some  nude  figures — for  example,  that  of  St. 
Sebastian — show  a  knowledge  of  the  human 
form  which  was  very  unusual  at  that  early 
period.  Many  of  these  Rheims  statues, 
like  those  of  Torell  at  Westminster,  are 
quite  equal  to  the  best  work  of  Niccola 
Pisano. 

The  Abbey  Church  of  St.  Denis  possesses 
the  largest  collection  of  thirteenth  century 
monumental  effigies,  a  large  number  of 
which,  with  supposed  portraits  of  the  early 
kings,  were  made  during  the  rebuilding  of 
the  church  in  1264;  some  of  them  appear  to 
be  "archaistic"  copies  of  old  contemporary 
statues. 

Through  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  cen- 
turies we  find  sculpture  becoming  more 
secular.  It  has  passed  from  the  hands  of 
the  monks  to  the  hands  of  the  bishops,  and 
these  bishops  were  less  subject  to  the  Pope 
than  were  the  monks,  strange  as  it  may  seem, 
and  permitted  a  great  variety  of  subjects  to 
be  represented  in  sculpture.  Some  groups 
of  great  interest  were  now  produced,  and  an 
actual  Renaissance  was  dawning  for  France. 
The  artist's  liberty  became  more  and  more 
wide.  The  work  of  the  time  shows  not  only 
a  democratic  tendency,  but  a  true  classic 
feeling  in  choice  of  attitude  and  arrange- 
ment of  line.  The  artists  of  this  time  seem 
to  have  known  the  laws  of  sculpture.  Their 
statues  and  reliefs  are  well  adapted  to  the 
position  they  occupy.  The  sculpture  of  this 
epoch  is  entirely  decorative,  and  cannot 
be  separated  from  architecture.  In  the 


APOLLO    AND    DAI'HNE   BY    BERNINI.       ROME.        (SEE   PAGE    2QI.) 


MEDIEVAL,  RENAISSANCE  AND  DECADENCE. 


283 


fourteenth  century  we  meet  the  names  of 
Jean  Ravi  and  his  nephew,  Jean  Bouteiller, 

sculptors  who  worked  together  upon  a  life 
of  the  Virgin  in  relief  about  the  Cloister  of 
Notre  Dame  in  Paris. 

In  the  fourteenth  century  French  sculp- 
ture began  to  decline,  though  much  beauti- 
ful plastic  work  was  still  produced.  Some 
of  the  reliefs  on  the  choir  screen  of  Notre 
Dame  at  Paris  belong  to  this  period,  as  does 
also  much  fine  sculpture  of  the  transept  of 
Rouen  Cathedral  and  the  west  end  of  Lyons. 
At  the  end  of  this  century  an  able  sculptor 
from  the  Netherlands,  called  Sluter,  ex- 
ecuted much  fine  work  under  the  patronage 
of  Philip  the  Bold,  for  whose  newly-founded 
Carthusian  monastery  in  1399  he  sculptured 
the  great  "Moses  Fountain,"  in  the  cloister, 
with  six  life-sized  statues  of  prophets  in 
stone,  painted  and  gilt  in  the  usual  medieval 
fashion,  The  latter  part  of  the  fifteenth 
century  in  France  was  a  time  of  transition 
from  the  medieval  style,  which  had  gradu- 
ally been  deteriorating,  to  the  more  florid 
and  realistic  taste  of  the  Renaissance. 


G 


ERMAN    MEDIEVAL    SCULP- 
TURE.^) 


Until  the  twelfth  century  sculp- 
ture in  Germany  continued  to  be 
under  the  lifeless  influence  of  Byzantium, 
tempered  to  an  extent  by  an  attempt  to 
return  to  classical  models.  This  is  seen  in 
the  bronze  pillar  reliefs  and  other  works 
produced  by  Bishop  Bernward  after  his  visit 
to  Rome.  Hildesheim,  Cologne,  and  the 
whole  of  the  Rhine  provinces  were  the  most 
active  seats  of  German  sculpture,  especially 
in  metal,  until  the  twelfth  century.  Many 
remarkable  pieces  of  bronze  sculpture  were 
produced  at  the  end  of  that  period,  of  which 
several  specimens  exist.  The  bronze  front 
at  Liege,  with  figure  subjects  in  relief  of 
various  baptismal  scenes  from  the  New 
Testament,  by  Lambert  Patras  of  Dinant, 
cast  about  1112,  is  a  work  of  most  wonder- 
ful beauty  and  perfection  for  its  time ;  other 
fonts  in  Osnabriick  and  Hildesheim.  cathe- 
drals are  surrounded  by  spirited  reliefs,  fine 
in  conception,  but  inferior  in  beauty  to 


those  on  the  Liege  font  Fine  bronze  can- 
delabra exist  in  the  Abbey  Church  of  Hom- 
burg  and  at  Aix-la-Chapelle,  the  latter  of 
about  1165.  Mersburg  Cathedral  has  a 
strange  realistic  sepulchral  figure  o£  Rudolf 
of  Swabia,  executed  about  noo;  and  at 
Magdeburg  is  a  fine  effigy,  also  in  bronze,  ot 
Bishop  Frederick,  treated  in  a  more  grace- 
ful way.  The  last  figure  has  a  peculiarity 
which  is  not  uncommon  in  the  older  bronze 
reliefs  of  Germany;  the  body  is  treated  as  a 
relief,  while  the  head  sticks  out  and  is  quite 
detached  from  the  ground  in  a  very  awk- 
ward way.  One  of  the  finest  plastic  works 
of  this  century  is  the  choir  screen  of  Hildes- 
heim Cathedral,  executed  in  hard  stucco, 
once  rich  with  gold  and  colors;  on  its  lower 
part  is  a  large  relief  of  saints  modeled  in 
almost  classical  breadth  and  nobility,  with 
drapery  of  especial  excellence. 

In  the  thirteenth  century  German  sculp- 
ture made  some  considerable  progress, 
but  it  did  not  reach  the  high  standard  of 
France.  One  of  the  best  examples  is  the 
"golden  gate"  of  Freiburg,  with  sculptured 
figures  on  the  jambs  after  the  French  fash- 
ion. The  statues  of  the  Apostles  on  the 
nave  pillars,  and  especially  one  of  the  Ma- 
donna at  the  east  end,  possess  great  beauty 
and  sculpturesque  breadth.  The  statues 
both  inside  and  outside  Bamberg  Cathedral, 
of  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century,  are 
nobly  designed;  and  an  equestrian  statue  of 
Conrad  III.,  in  the  market  place  at  Bam- 
berg, supported  by  a  foliated  corbel,  ex- 
hibits startling  vigor  and  originality,  and  is 
designed  with  wonderful  largeness  of  effect, 
though  small  in  scale.  The  statues  of 
Henry  the  Lion  and  Queen  Mathilda  at 
Brunswick,  of  about  the  same  period,  are  of 
the  highest  beauty  and  dignity  of  expres- 
sion. 

Strasburg  Cathedral,  though  sadly  dam- 
aged by  restoration,  still  possesses  a  large 
quantity  of  the  finest  sculpture  of  the  thir- 
teenth century.  One  tympanum  relief  of 
the  Death  of  the  Virgin,  surrounded  by  the 
Sorrowing  Apostles,  is  a  work  of  the  very 
highest  beauty,  worthy  to  rank  with  the  best 
Italian  sculpture  of  even  a  later  period.  Of 
its  class  nothing  can  surpass  the  highly  deco- 
rative carving  at  Strasburg,  with  varied 


284 


SCULPTURE: 


realistic  foliage  studied  from  nature,  evi- 
dently with  the  keenest  interest  and  enjoy- 
ment. Nuremberg  is  rich  in  good  sculpture 
of  the  fourteenth  century.  The  Church  of 
St.  Sebald,  the  Frauenkirche  and  the  west 
fagade  of  St.  Lawrence  are  lavishly  deco- 
rated with  reliefs  and  statues  very  rich  in 
effect,  but  showing  the  germs  of  that  man- 
nerism which  grew  so  strong  in  Germany 
during  the  fifteenth  century.  Of  special 
beauty  are  the  statuettes  which  adorn  the 
"beautiful  fountain"  executed  by  Heinrich 
der  Balier  (1385-1396),  and  richly  decorated 
with  gold  and  colors  by  the  painter  Rudolf. 
A  number  of  colossal  figures  were  exe- 
cuted for  Cologne  Cathedral  between  1349 
and  1361,  but  they  are  of  no  great  merit. 
Augsburg  produced  several  sculptors  of 
ability  about  this  time ;  the  museum  there 
possesses  some  very  noble  wooden  statues  of 
this  school,  large  in  scale  and  dignified  in 
treatment.  On  the  exterior  of  the  choir  of 
the  Church  of  Marienburg  Castle,  is  a  very 
remarkable  colossal  figure  of  the  Virgin  of 
about  1340-50.  Like  the  Hildesheim  choir 
screen ,  it  is  made  of  hard  stucco  and  is  deco- 
rated with  glass  mosaics.  The  equestrian 
bronze  group  of  St.  George  and  the  Dragon 
in  the  market  place  at  Prague  is  excellent 
in  workmanship  and  full  of  vigor,  though 
much  wanting  in  dignity  and  style.  An- 
other fine  work  in  bronze  of  about  the  same 
date  is  the  effigy  of  Archbishop  Conrad 
(1261)  in  Cologne  Cathedral,  executed  many 
years  after  his  death.  The  portrait  appears 
truthful,  and  the  whole  figure  is  noble  in 
style.  The  military  effigies  of  this  time  in 
Germany,  as  elsewhere,  were  almost  un- 
avoidably stiff  and  lifeless  from  the  neces- 
sity of  representing  them  in  plate  armor; 
the  ecclesiastical  chasuble,  in  which  priestly 
effigies  nearly  always  appeared,  is  also  a 
thoroughly  unsculpturesqtie  form  of  dra- 
pery, both  from  its  awkward  shape  and  its 
absence  of  fold.  The  fifteenth  century  was 
one  of  great  activity  and  originality  in  the 
sculpture  of  Germany,  and  produced  many 
artists  of  high  ability.  One  specialty  of  the 
time  was  the  production  of  an  immense 
number  of  wooden  altars  and  reredoses. 
painted  and  gilded  in  the  most  gorgeous 
way,  and  covered  with  subject  reliefs  and 


statues,  the  former  often  treated  in  a  very 
pictorial  way.  Wooden  screens,  stalls,  taber- 
nacles, and  other  church  fittings  of  the 
greatest  elaboration  and  clever  workman- 
ship were  largely  produced  in  Germany  at 
the  same  time,  and  on  into  the  sixteenth 
century. 


I 


TALIAN    AND    SPANISH 
VAL    SCULPTURE.  (20) 


MEDIE- 


Until  the  great  revival  of  the  plastic 
arts  took  place  in  the  middle  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  the  sculpture  of  Italy 
was  decidedly  inferior  to  that  of  all  other 
northern  countries.  Much  of  it  was  actually 
the  work  of  northern  sculptors — as,  for  ex- 
ample, the  very  rude  sculpture  on  the  fagade 
of  St.  Andrea  at  Pistoia,  executed  about 
1 1 86,  by  Giramos  and  his  brother  Adeodatus. 
Unlike  the  sculpture  of  the  Pisani,  and  later 
artists,  these  early  figures  are  thoroughly 
secondary  to  the  architecture  they  are  de- 
signed to  decorate.  They  are  evidently  the 
work  of  men  who  were  architects  first  and 
sculptors  afterward.  After  the  thirteenth 
century  the  reverse  was  usually  the  case, 
and,  as  at  the  west  end  of  Orvieto  Cathe- 
dral, the  sculptured  decorations  are  treated  as 
being  of  primary  importance,  though  the 
Italian  sculptor-architect  never  allowed  his 
statues  or  reliefs  to  weaken  or  damage  their 
architectural  surroundings,  as  is  unfortu- 
nately the  case  with  modern  sculpture.  In 
southern  Italy,  during  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, there  existed  a  school  of  sculpture 
resembling  that  of  France,  owing  probably 
to  the  Norman  occupation.  The  pulpit  in 
the  cathedral  of  Bavello,  executed  by  Nic- 
olaus  de  Bartholomeo  di  Poggia  in  1272,  is 
an  important  work  of  this  class,  it  is  en- 
riched with  very  noble  sculpture,  especially 
a  large  female  head  crowned  with  a  foliated 
coronet,  and  combines  life-like  vigor  with 
largeness  of  style  in  a  very  remarkable  way. 
In  the  early  medieval  period  the  sculpture 
of  northern  Spain  was  much  influenced  by 
contemporary  art  in  France.  From  the 
twelfth  to  the  fourteenth  century  many 
French  architects  and  sculptors  visited  and 
worked  in  Spain.  The  cathedral  of  Santi- 


MEDIEVAL,  RENAISSANCE  AND  DECADENCE. 


285 


ago  de  Compostello  possesses  one  of  the 
grandest  existing  specimens  in  the  world  of 
the  late  twelfth  century  architectonic  sculp- 
ture; this,  though  the  work  of  a  native 
artist,  Master  Matto,  is  thoroughly  French 
in  style.  As  recorded  by  an  inscription  on 
the  front,  it  was  completed  in  1188.  The 
whole  of  the  western  portal,  with  its  three 
doorways,  is  covered  with  statues  and  re- 
liefs, all  richly  decorated  with  color,  part  of 
which  still  remains.  Around  the  central 
arch  are  figures  of  the  twenty-four  elders, 
and  in  the  tympanum  a  very  noble  relief  of 
Christ  in  Majesty,  between  saints  and 
angels.  As  at  Chartres,  the  jamb  shafts  of 
the  doorways  are  decorated  with  standing 
statues  of  saints,  St.  James  the  Elder,  the 
patron  of  the  church,  being  attached  to  the 
central  pillars.  These  noble  figures,  though 
treated  in  a  somewhat  rigid  manner,  are 
thoroughly  subordinate  to  the  main  lines  of 
the  building.  Their  heads,  with  pointed 
beards  and  a  fixed  mechanical  smile,  to- 
gether with  stiff  drapery  arranged  in  long 
narrow  folds,  recall  the  .^Eginetan  pediment 
sculpture  of  about  500  B.  C.  This  appears 
strange  at  first  sight,  but  the  fact  is  that  the 
works  of  the  early  Greek  and  the  medieval 
Spaniard  were  both  produced  at  a  somewhat 
similar  stage,  in  two  far-distant  periods  of 
artistic  development.  In  both  cases  plastic 
art  was  freeing  itself  from  the  bonds  of  a 
hieratic  archaism,  and  had  reached  one  of 
the  last  steps  in  a  development  which  in  the 
one  case  culminated  in  the  perfection  of  the 
Pheidian  age,  and  in  the  other  led  to  the 
exquisitely  beautiful  yet  simple  art  of 
the  end  of  the  thirteenth  and  early  part  of 
the  fourteenth  centuries, — the  golden  age 
of  sculpture  in  France  and  England  also.  In 
the  fourteenth  century  the  silversmiths  of 
Spain  produced  many  works  of  sculpture  of 
great  size  and  technical  power.  One  of  the 
finest,  by  a  Valentian  called  Peter  Bernec,  is 
the  great  silver  memorial  at  Gerona  Cathe- 
dral. It  is  divided  into  three  tiers  of  statu- 
ettes and  reliefs,  richly  framed  canopied 
niches,  all  of  silver,  partly  cast  and  partly 
hammered.  In  the  fifteenth  century  an 
infusion  of  German  influence  was  mixed 
with  that  of  France,  as  may  be  seen  in  the 
very  rich  sculptured  decorations  which 


adorn  the  main  door  of  Salamanca  Cathe- 
dral, thefagadeof  St.  Juan  at  Valladolid,  and 
the  church  and  cloisters  of  St.  Juan  de  los 
Reyes  at  Toledo,  perhaps  the  most  gorgeous 
examples  of  architectural  sculpture  in  the 
world.  The  carved  foliage  of  this  period  is 
of  a  special  beauty  and  spirited  execution ; 
realistic  forms  of  plant  growth  are  mingled 
with  other  more  formal  foliage  in  the  most 
masterly  manner.  The  very  noble  bronze 
monument  of  Archdeacon  Pelayo  in  Burgos 
Cathedral  was  probably  the  work  of  Simon 
of  Cologne,  who  was  also  architect  of  the 
Certosa  at  Miraflores,  two  miles  from  Bur- 
gos. The  church  of  the  Certosa  monastery 


TOMB   OF    KING   JOHN   II.    AND  QUEEN   AT   BURGOS. 

contains  two  of  the  most  magnificently  rich 
monuments  in  the  world,  especially  the 
altar  to  King  John  II.  and  the  Queen,  by  Gil 
de  Siloe, — a  perfect  marvel  of  rich  alabaster 
canopy- work  and  intricate  under-cutting. 
The  effigies  of  the  period  have  little  merit. 
Survey  of  Medieval  Sculpture. — We  have 
seen  how  in  the  medieval  period  art  grew 
naturally  out  of  artisanship.  When  the 
artisan  began  to  think,  when  the  spiritual 
nature  within  him  was  once  awakened,  he 
was  no  longer  content  with  the  bare  roof 
and  walls  of  his  church,  but  sought  to  im- 
press upon  them  the  essence  and  form  of  his 
religion.  The  scriptural  stories,  and  the 
deeds  of  the  saints,  he  attempted  to  depict 


286 


SCULPTURE: 


in  color,  as  well  as  in  carving-,  upon  every 
available  wall-space.  He  aspired  to  see 
truth  as  well  as  to  hear  it  expounded,  and 
he  sought  through  physical  nature  as  well 
as  through  human  tradition  for  emblems  of 
the  goodness  and  power  of  the  Creator. 
From  the  work  of  the  ivory  and  metal 
carver,  which  was  of  a  refinement  and 
artistic  perception  scarcely  surpassed  by 
the  masters  of  the  fifteenth  century, 


- 


BAS-UELIKF 


LUCA  DELLA  ROHBIA.   FLORENCE. 


wrought  out  in  the  quiet  and  silence  of 
the  monaster)'-,  often  with  fasting  and 
prayer,  grew  the  sculptured  saints  and 
angels  and  storied  figures  that  crowded  one 
another  on  the  fagades  of  the  great  cathedrals 
and  surrounded  every  shrine  within  them. 

The  growth  of  sculpture  forms  an  instruc- 
tive epitome  of  the  development  of  the 
entire  art -instinct  from  Paganism  to  Chris- 
tianity. Christianity,  in  refusing  to  accept 
the  pagan  myths  in  any  form  of  sculpture 


at  first  seemed  to  paralyze  art  entirely, 
and  image-breaking  took  the  place  of  image- 
making.  As  the  centuries  slipped  away, 
and  the  art  instinct  began  to  again  demand 
expression,  beauty  of  form  was  made  sub- 
servient to  the  purity  of  the  sentiment  ex- 
pressed. This  is  why  the  medieval  sculp- 
ture, when  isolated  from  its  architectural 
setting,  seems  so  coarse  in  execution,  and 
so  untrue  to  the  laws  of  form.  The  early 
Christian  work  shows 
^  _  '  evidences  of  the  early 

Roman  convert,  who 
at  his  best  was  never 
a  good  artist,  When 
the  workmen  became 
more  expert  and  yet 
were  still  imbued  with 
the  one  idea  of  working 
for  the  glorification  of 
God,  as  expressed  in  the 
adornment  of  his  tem- 
ple, the  cathedral  be- 
came the  epitome,  not 
only  of  the  whole  Chris- 
tian idea,  but  also  of 
the  daily  life  of  the 
whole  people,  which 
centered  round  it  in  a 
way  that  is  plainly  ex- 
pressed by  the  manner 
in  which  their  homes, 
schools,  and  civic  build- 
ings clustered  around 
and  about  the  wings  of 
the  cathedral.  We  have 
attempted  here  to  show 
that  medieval  art  had 
its  inception  in  the  de- 
sire of  man  to  record 
his  spiritual  aspiration, 

and  that  these  aspirations  found  expression 
in  the  diptych  and  in  the  symbols  of  his  faith ; 
and  then,  in  a  larger  expression,  in  the  adorn- 
ment of  God's  house.  Its  consummation 
was  in  the  Gothic  cathedral,  which  our 
own  poet  Lowell  describes  with  such  rare 
felicity: 

"But  oh,  this  other,  this  that  never  ends, 
Forever  climbing,  seeking  still  to  climb, 
Heavy  as  nightmare,  airy  light  as  fern, 
Imagination's  very  self  in  stone." 


MEDIEVAL,  RENAISSANCE  AND  DECADENCE. 


287 


I 


TALIAN      RENAISSANCE     SCULP- 
TURE.(2i) 


During  the  fourteenth  century  Flor- 
ence and  the  neighboring  cities  were 
the  chief  centers  of  Italian  sculpture,  and 
their  numerous  sculptors,  notably  Giovanni 
Pisano,  Andrea  Pisano,  and  Andrea  Oreagna, 
of  successively  increasing  artistic  power, 
lived  and  worked  until,  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  Florence  had  become  the  aesthetic 
capital  of  the  world,  and  reached  a  pitch  of 
artistic  wealth  and  perfection  which  Athens 
alone  in  its  best  days  could  have  rivaled. 
The  similarity  between  the  plastic  arts  of 
Athens  in  the  fourth  or  fifth  centuries  B.  C. 
and  of  Florence  in  the  fifteenth  is  not  one 
of  analogy  only.  Though  free  from  any 
touch  of  copyism,  there  are  many  points  in 
the  works  of  such  men  as  Donatello,  Luca 
della  Robbia,  and  Vittore  Pisanello,  which 
strongly  recall  the  sculpture  of  ancient 
Greece,  and  suggest  that,  if  a  sculptor  of  the 
later  Pheidian  school  had  been  surrounded  by 
the  same  type  of  face  and  costume  as  that 
among  which  the  Italians  lived,  he  would 
have  produced  plastic  works  resembling 
those  of  the  great  Florentine  masters.  In 
the  fourteenth  century  in  northern  Italy 
various  schools  of  sculpture  existed,  espe- 
cially at  Verona  and  Venice,  whose  art 
differed  widely  from  the  contemporary  art 
of  Tuscany  (Florence  and  Pisa) ;  but  Milan 
and  Pavia,  on  the  other  hand,  possess 
sculptors  who  follow  closely  the  style  of  the 
Tuscan  Pisani.  The  chief  examples  of  the 
latter  class  are  the  magnificent  shrine  of  St. 
Augustine,  in  the  Cathedral  of  Pavia,  dated 
1362,  and  the  somewhat  similar  shrine  of  St. 
Peter,  the  Martyr,  1339,  by  Balduccio  of 
Pisa,  in  the  church  of  St.  Eustorgio  at 
Milan,  both  of  white  marble,  decorated  in 
the  most  lavish  way  with  statuettes  and  sub- 
ject reliefs.  Many  other  fine  pieces  of  the 
Pisan  school  exist  in  Milan.  The  well- 
known  tombs  of  the  Scaliger  family  at 
Verona  show  a  more  native  style  of  design, 
and  in  general  form,  though  not  in  detail, 
suggest  the  influence  of  transalpine  Gothic. 
In  Venice  the  northern  and  almost  French 
character  of  much  of  the  early  fifteenth 
century  sculpture  is  more  strongly  marked, 


especially  in  the  noble  figures  in  high  relief 
which  decorate  the  lower  story  and  angles 
of  the  Doge's  Palace.  Those  are  mostly  the 
work  of  a  Venetian,  named  Bartholomeo 
Bon.  A  magnificent  marble  tympanum  by 
Bon  has  recently  been  added  to  the  South 
Kensington  Museum ;  it  has  a  noble  colos- 
sal figure  of  the  Madonna,  who  shelters 
under  her  mantle  a  number  of  kneeling 
worshipers;  the  background  is  enriched  by 
foliage  and  heads,  forming  a  Jesse  tree, 
designed  with  great  decorative  skill.  The 
cathedral  of  Como,  built  at  the  very  end  of 
the  fifteenth  century,  is  decorated  with  good 
sculpture  of  almost  Gothic  style,  but  on  the 
whole  rather  dull  and  mechanical  in  detail, 
like  much  of  the  sculpture  in  the  extreme 
north  of  Italy.  A  large  quantity 'of  rich 
sculpture  was  produced  in  Naples  during 
the  fourteenth  century,  but  of  no  great 
merit,  either  in  design  or  in  execution. 
The  lofty  monument  of  King  Robert,  1350, 
behind  the  high  altar  of  Si.  Chiara,  and 
other  tombs  in  the  same  church,  are  the 
most  conspicuous  works  of  this  period. 
Very  beautiful  sepulchral  effigies  in  low 
relief  were  produced  in  many  parts  of  Italy, 
especially  at  Florence.  The  tomb  of 
Lorenzo  Acciaioli  in  the  Certosa,  near  Flor- 
ence, is  a  fine  example  of  about  the  year 
1400;  but  it  was  not  until  the  middle  of 
the  century  that 
the  arrival  of 
able  Florentine 
sculptors,  such 
as  Filarete,  Mi- 
no  da  Fiesole, 
and  the  Polla- 
juoli,  initiated  a 
brilliant  era  of 
artistic  activity 
in  Rome,  which, 
however,  for 
about  a  century 
continued  to 
depend  on  the 
presence  of 
sculptors  from 
Tuscany  and 
other  northern 
p  r  o  v  i  n  c  es.  It 
was  not,  in  fact,  DAVID  BY  DONATELLO. 


288 


SCULPTURE: 


DETAIL  OF  THE  DAVID  BY  MICHELANGELO.   FLORENCE. 


until  the  period  of  full  decadence  had 
begun  that  Rome  itself  produced  any  nota- 
ble artists.  Meanwhile,  at  Florence  the 
Pisani  and  Arnolfo  del  Cambio  were  suc- 
ceeded by  Orcagna  and  others,  who  car- 
ried on  and  developed  the  great  lessons 
that  the  Renaissance  had  taught.  Qhiberti, 
the  sculptor  of  the  world-famed  Baptistery 
gates  (see  the  panel,  p.  29) ;  Donatello,  the 
master  of  delicate  relief  and  dignified  real- 
ism; Luca  della  Robbia,  with  his  classic 
purity  of  style  and  sweetness  of  expression, 
came  next  in  order.  Unsensual  beauty, 
elevated  by  religious  spirit,  was  attained  in 
the  highest  degree  by  Mino  da  Fiesole,  the 
two  Rossellini,  Benedetto  da  Majano,  and 
other  sculptors  of  Florence.  Two  of  the 
noblest  equestrian  statues  the  world  has 


probably  ever  seen 
are  the  Gattamelata 
statue  at  Padua  by 
Donatello,  and  the 
statue  of  Colleoni  at 
Venice  by  Verroc- 
chio.  A  third,  which 
was  probably  of  equal 
beauty,  was  modeled 
in  clay  by  Leonardo 
da  Vinci,  but  it  no 
longer  exists.  Finally 
came  Michelangelo, 
who  raised  the  sculp- 
ture of  the  modern 
world  to  its  highest 
pitch  of  magnifi- 
cence, and  at  the 
same  time  sowed  the 
seeds  of  its  rapidly 
approaching  decline; 
the  head  of  his  David 
is  a  work  of  unrivaled 
dignity.  His  rivals 
and  imitators,  Baccio 
Bandinelli,  Giacomo 
della  Porta,  Monte- 
lupo,  A  in  m  a  n  a  t  i, 
Prospero  dementi, 
and  others  copied 
and  exaggerated  his 
faults  without  pos- 
sessing a  touch  of  his 
gigantic  genius.  In 

other  parts  of  Italy,  such  as  Pavia,  the 
traditions  of  the  fifteenth  century  lasted 
longer,  though  gradually  fading.  The  stat- 
uary and  reliefs  which  make  the  Certosa 
near  Pavia  one  of  the  most  gorgeous  build- 
ings in  the  world  are  free  from  the  influence 
of  Michelangelo,  which  at  Florence  and 
Rome  was  over-eminent.  Though  much  of 
the  sculpture  was  begun  in  the  second  part 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  the  greater  part  was 
not  executed  until  much  later.  The  mag- 
nificent tomb  of  the  founder,  Giovanni 
Galeazzo  Visconti,  was  not  completed  until 
about  1560,  and  is  a  gorgeous  example  of 
the  style  of  the  Renaissance  grown  weak 
from  excess  of  richness,  and  from  loss  of  the 
simple  purity  of  the  art  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury. Everywhere  in  this  wonderful  build- 


MEDIEVAL,  RENAISSANCE  AND  DECADENCE. 


289 


ing  the  fault  is  the  same,  and  the  growing 
love  of  luxury  and  display  which  was  the 
curse  of  the  time  is  reflected  in  the  plastic 
decoration  of  the  whole  church.  The  old 
religious  spirit  had  died  out,  and  was  suc- 
ceeded by  unbelief  or  by  an  affected  sur- 
vival of  paganism.  Monuments  to  ancient 
Romans  such  as  those  of  the  two  Pliny s,  on 
the  fagade  of  Como  Cathedral,  or  as  that 
erected  at  Rimini  by  Sigismondo  Pandolfo 
in  honor  of  Isotta,  arose  side  by  side  with 
shrines  and  churches  dedicated  to  the  saints. 
We  have  seen  how  the  youthful  vigor  of  the 
Christian  faith  vivified  for  a  time  the  dry 
bones  of  expiring  classic  art,  and  now  the 
decay  of  this  same  belief  brought  with  it 
the  destruction  of  all  that  was  the  most  valu- 
able in  medieval  sculpture.  Sculpture  like 
the  other  arts  became  the  slave  of  the  rich, 
and  ceased  to  be  the  natural  expression  of  a 
whole  people.  Though  for  a  long  time  in 
Italy,  great  technical  skill  continued  to  ex- 
ist, the  vivifying  spirit  was  dead,  and  at 
last  a  dull  scholasticism  or  a  riotous  ex- 
travagance of  design  became  the  leading 
characteristic. 

The  term  Renaissance  applies  more  prop- 
erly to  Italy  than  to  any  other  country,  be- 
cause Italy  was  the  inspiration,  origin  and 
center  of  this  movement,  and  the  Renais- 
sance in  Italy  was  a  re-birth  in  very  truth; 
the  coming  to  light  of  that  spirit  of  beauty 
so  alive  in  the  days  of  Roman  grandeur,  and 
which  suffered  an  eclipse  in  the  middle 
ages.  The  Italians  made  a  mistake,  how- 
ever, in  believing  that  they  were  reviving 
the  glory  of  past  civilizations,  while  in 
reality  their  great  men  were  only  inspired 
by  classical  art,  and  gave  to  their  time  an 
art  that  was  distinctively  Italian  and  mod- 
ern, what  one  may  call  a  humanized  art. 


I 


TALIAN    DECADENCE 
TURE.(22) 


SCULP- 


The  period  of  the  decadence  may  be 
comprised  in  the  years  from  1600  to 
1800.  While  Rome  and  Florence  were  dis- 
puting for  the  body  of  the  dead  Angelo  as 
fervently  as  they  had  quarreled  over  him 
when  he  was  alive,  the  art  of  which  he  had 


been  the  master  exponent  was  declining 
steadily  but  surely.  The  very  character- 
istics that  had  made  Angelo  great  were  the 
precursors  of  the  decadence  of  his  art, 
although  now  and  again  there  were  recurring 
waves  of  artistic  impulse  that  seemed  to 
herald  a  second  Renaissance.  The  tide- 
water mark  left  by  the  greatest  sculptor  of 
this  time  was  not  again  reached  or  even 


TOMB   OF   GIOVANNI    GALEAZZO  VISCONTI  IN   THE  CERTOSA 
NEAR    PA VI A. 


approached  by  his  successors.  The  virile 
strength  of  Angelo,  and  his  passionate 
naturalism,  which  saw  men  through  Olym- 
pian eyes,  became  the  stumbling  block  of 
the  lesser  spirits  who  followed  him,  and, 
like  Bandinelli  with  his  Hercules,  they  pro- 
duced figures  of  exaggerated  muscular  de- 
velopment and  coarseness  that  lacked  the 
spiritual  energy  which  gave  life  to  the  crea- 
tions of  Angelo.  So  in  like  measure  was  the 


290 


SCULPTURE: 


work  of  Ammanati,  the  rival  of  Bandinelli 
(although  in  some  ways  superior  to  his), 
characterized  by  an  utter  lack  of  the  spirit 
with  which  Michelangelo  unconsciously  im- 
bued his  creations,  because  he  had  it  in  him- 
self. I  may  mention  a  third  contemporary, 
Tribolo,  who,  like  Ammanati,  was  a  pupil  for 


PERSEUS   WITH   THE   HEAD   OF   MEDUSA. 
Bronze  statue  by  Cellini.     Florence. 


a  time  of  the  famous  architect  Sansovino. 
He,  too,  found  his  ruin  in  the  imitation  of 
Angelo. 

If  any  one  doubts  that  the  decadent  era  of 
sculpture  had  set  in  at  Angelo's  death,  let 
him  compare  the  creations  of  his  followers, 
with  the  allegorical  statues  of  the  masters 
of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries. 
We  cannot  pass  over  the  beginning  of  the 
decadent  period  without  mentioning  Benve- 
nuto  Cellini  (1500-1572),  who  had  the  com- 
mendation on  more  than  one  occasion  of 
Michelangelo  himself.  While  his  statue  oi 
Perseus  holding  the  head  of  Medusa  is  well 
known  to  all  travelers  in  Florence,  his  artis- 
tic fame  must  rest  on  his  art  of  gold- 
working  rather  than  on  this  picturesque 
conception.  In  him  culminated  that  won- 
derful art  of  metal-working  which  had 
flourished  for  many  centuries  in  Florence. 
Before  leaving  this  early  decadent  period  I 
must  mention  the  name  of  Giovanni  da 
Bologna,  whose  most  important  group,  called 
the  "Rape  of  the  Sabines, "  stands  close  to 
the  Perseus  in  the  Loggia  dei  Lanzi  in  Flor- 
ence, but  who  is  best  known  to  the  art  world 
by  his  "Flying  Mercury,"  which  has  been 
reproduced  in  many  sizes  and  is  an  artistic 
triumph  in  its  modeling  and  casting. 

While  there  are  many  minor  names  in  this 
period,  we  may  pass  them  over  in  silence. 
Imitation  had  taken  the  place  of  creation 
and  inspiration,  and  patronage  had  reduced 
the  artist  to  the  position  of  a  craftsman  in- 
stead of  a  free  patriot  of  the  republic.  The 
rich  had  selfishly  given  themselves  over  to 
the  enrichment  of  their  private  dwellings, 
and  art  no  longer  sought  to  ennoble  the 
public  buildings,  such  as  cathedrals  and 
civic  courts,  with  its  productions.  It  is  the 
old  story  of  technique  taking  the  place  of 
soul.  One  may  well  say  that  the  history  of 
sculpture  closes  in  this  sixteenth  century,  so 
that  when  the  Italian  wishes  to  express  his 
contempt  for  a  work  of  art  he  can  find  no 
phrase  more  adequate  than  "sei  cento." 

It  was  through  these  sixteenth -century 
artists  also  that  the  style  known  as  Baroque 
came  into  existence.  This  style  may  be 
defined  as  a  straining  after  the  impossible, 
the  effort  to  express  in  form  what  belongs  to 
the  realm  of  the  painter  and  the  musician. 


MEDIEVAL,  RENAISSANCE  AND  DECADENCE. 


291 


Lorenzo  Bernini  (1598-1680)  was  well  called 
the  prophet  of  this  style;  he  had  the  t'atal 
faculty  of  the  over-trained  craftsman,  and 
stopped  at  nothing.  We  find  him  carving 
clouds  out  of  solid  marble  in  order  to  make 
a  comfortable  seat  for  St.  Peter ;  and  those 
angels  that  one  passes  in  crossing  the  Tiber 
to  reach  St.  Peter's  are  clothed  in  garments 
that  strain  after  the  effect  of  the  wind-blown 
drapery  of  a  Winged  Victory,  which  the 
Greek  expressed  so  naively. 

His  chief  early  group,  the  Apollo  and 
Daphne,  in  the  Borghese  Casino,  is  a  work 
of  wonderful  technical  skill,  and  delicate 
high  finish,  combined  with  soft  beauty  and 
grace,  though  too  pictorial  in  style.  (Page 
281).  In  later  life  Bernini  turned  out  work  of 
brutal  coarseness,  designed  in  a  thoroughly 
unsculpturesque  style.  The  churches  of 
Rome,  the  colonnade  of  St.  Peter's,  and  the 
bridge  of  St.  Angelo  are  crowded  with  his 
clumsy  colossal  figures,  half  -  draped  in 
wildly  fluttering  garments, — perfect  models 
of  what  is.  worst  in  the  plastic  arts.  And 
yet  his  works  received  perhaps  more  praise 
than  those  of  any  other  sculptor  of  any  age, 
and  after  his  death  a  scaffolding  was  erected 
outside  the  bridge  of  St.  Angelo,  in  order 
that  people  might  walk  round  and  admire 
his  row  of  feeble,  half-naked  angels.  For 
all  that,  Bernini  was  a  man  of  undoubted 
talent,  and  in  a  better  period  of  art  would 
have  been  a  sculptor  of  the  first  rank;  many 
of  his  portrait-busts  are  works  of  great  vigor 
and  dignity,  quite  free  from  the  mannered 
extravagance  of  his  larger  sculptures. 
Stefano  Maderna  (1571-1636)  was  the  ablest 
of  his  contemporaries;  his  clever  and  much- 
admired  statue,  the  figure  of  the  dead  St. 
Cecilia  under  the  high  altar  of  her  basilica, 
is  chiefly  remarkable  for  its  death-like  pose 
and  the  realistic  treatment  of  the  drapery. 
Another  clever  sculptor  was  Alessandro 
Algardi  of  Bologna  (1598-1654).  In  the 
next  century  at  Naples,  Queirolo,  Corradini, 
and  Sanmartino  produced  a  number  of 
statues,  now  in  the  chapel  of  St.  Maria  de' 
Sangii,  which  are  extraordinary  examples 
of  wasted  labor  and  ignorance  of  the  sim- 
plest canons  of  plastic  art.  These  are  mar- 
ble statues  enmeshed  in  nets  or  covered  with 
thin  veils,  executed  with  almost  deceptive 


MERCURY  BY  JOHN  OF  BOLOGNA.   FLORENCE. 

realism,  perhaps  the  lowest  stage  of  trickery 
and  degradation  into  which  the  sculptor's 
art  can  possibly  fall.  In  the  eighteenth 
century  Italy  was  naturally  the  headquarters 
of  the  classical  revival,  which  spread  thence 
throughout  most  of  Europe.  Canova  (1757- 
1822),  a  Venetian  by  birth,  who  spent  most 
of  his  life  in  Rome,  was  perhaps  the  leading 
spirit  of  this  movement,  and  became  the 
most  popular  sculptor  of  his  time.  His 
work  is  very  unequal  in  merit,  mostly  dull 
and  uninteresting  in  style,  and  is  occasion- 
ally marred  by  a  meretricious  spirit  very 
contrary  to  the  true  classic  feeling.  His 
group  of  the  Three  Graces,  the  Hebe,  and 
the  very  popular  Dancing-girls,  copies  of 
which  in  plaster  disfigure  the  stairs  of 


SCULPTURE: 


THESEUS   AND    CENTAUR   BY   CANOVA.      VIENNA. 


countless  modern  hotels  on  the  continent, 
are  typical  examples  of  Canova's  worst 
work.  Some  of  his  sculpture  is  designed 
with  far  more  of  the  purity  of  antique  art; 
his  finest  work  is  the  group  of  Theseus  slay- 
ing a  Centaur  at  Vienna.  Other  celebrated 
productions  of  Canova  are  the  Perseus  of 
the  Belvedere  (Rome),  the  boxers  Kreugas 
and  Damoxenes  also  in  the  Belvedere,  the 
Cupid  and  Psyche  of  the  Louvre,  Paris  of 
the  Glyptothek  in  Munich,  and  Hercules  and 
Lichas  in  Venice.  Canova's  attempts  at  Chris- 
tian sculpture  are  singularly  unsuccessful, 
as,  for  example,  his  pretentious  monument  to 
Pope  Clement  XIII.,  in  St.  Peter's  at  Rome, 
that  to  Titian  at  Vonice,  and  Alfieri's  tomb 
in  the  Florentine  church  of  Santa  Croce. 


E 


NGLISH  AND  GERMAN  RE- 
NAISSANCE AND  DECADENCE 
SCULPTURE.  (23) 


At  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth 
century  sculpture  in  England  was  entering 
upon  a  period  of  rapid  decadence,  and  to 
some  extent  had  lost  its  native  individuality. 
The  finest  series  of  statues  of  this  period  are 
those  of  life-size  upon  the  walls  of  Henry 
VIII. 's  chapel  at  Westminster,  and  others 
over  the  various  altars.  These  ninety-five 
figures,  which  represent  saints  and  doctors 
of  the  Church,  differ  very  much  in  merit. 
Some  show  German  influence,  others  that  of 
Italy,  while  a  third  class  are,  as  it  were, 
"archaistic, "  imitations  of  older  English 


MEDIEVAL,  RENAISSANCE  AND  DECADENCE. 


293 


sculpture.  In  some  cases  the  heads  and 
general  pose  are  graceful,  and  the  dra- 
pery dignified,  but  in  the  main  they  are 
coarse  both  in  design  and  in  workman- 
ship, as  compared  with  the  plastic  art  of 
the  thirteenth  century  and  also  of  the 
fourteenth.  This  decadence  of  English 
sculpture  caused  Henry  VII.  to  invite  the 
Florentine  Torrigiano  to  come  to  Eng- 
land to  model  and  cast  the  bronze  figures 
for  his  own  magnificent  tomb,  which  still 
exists  in  almost  perfect  preservation.  The 
recumbent  effigies  of  Henry  VII.  and  his 
queen  are  fine  specimens  of  Florentine  art, 
well  modeled  with  life-like  portrait  heads, 
and  of  very  fine  technique  in  the  casting. 
The  altar-tomb  on  which  the  effigies  lie  is  of 
black  marble,  decorated  with  large  medal- 
lion reliefs  in  gilt  bronze,  each  with  a  pair 
of  saints, — the  patrons  of  Henry  and  Eliza- 
beth of  York — of  very  graceful  design.  The 
altar  and  its  large  baldacchino  and  reredoses 
were  the  work  of  Torrigiano,  but  were 
destroyed  during  the  seventeenth  century. 
The  reredos  had  a  large  relief  of  the  resur- 
rection, executed  in  painted  terra-cotta,  as 
were  also  a  life-sized  figure  of  the  dead 
Christ  under  the  altar  slab,  and  four  angels 
on  the  top  angles  of  the  baldacchino.  A 
number  of  fragments  of  these  figures  have 
recently  been  found  in  the  "pockets"  of  the 
nave  vaulting,  where  they  had  been  thrown 
after  the  destruction  of  the  reredos.  Tor- 
rigiano's  bronze  effigy  of  Margaret  of  Rich- 
mond in  the  south  aisle  of  the  same  chapel 
is  a  very  skillful  but  realistic  portrait,  ap- 
parently taken  from  a  cast  of  the  dead  face 
and  hands.  Another  terra  cotta  effigy  in 
the  Rolls  chapel  is  also-,  from  internal 
appearance,  attributed  to  the  same  able 
Florentine.  Another  talented  Florentine 
sculptor,  Benedetto  da  Rovezzano,  was  in- 
vited to  England  by  Cardinal  Wolsey  to 
make  his  tomb,  of  which  only  the  marble 
sarcophagus  now  exists,  and  has  been  used 
to  hold  the  body  of  Admiral  Nelson  in  St. 
Paul's  Cathedral.  Another  member  of  the 
same  family,  named  Giovanni,  was  the 
sculptor  of  the  colossal  terra  cotta  heads  of 
the  Caesars,  affixed  to  the  walls  of  the  older 
part  of  Hampton  Court  Palace. 

During  the  troublous  times  of  the  Refor- 


mation, sculpture,  like  the  other  arts,  con- 
tinued to  decline.  Of  seventeenth  century 
monumental  effigies  that  of  Sir  Francis  Vere 
in  the  northern  transept  at  Westminster  is 
one  of  the  best,  though  its  design — a 
recumbent  effigy  overshadowed  by  a  slab 
covered  with  armor,  upborn  by  four  kneel- 
ing figures  of  men-at-arms — is  about  an  exact 
copy  of  the  tomb  of  Englebert  II.  of  Vianden- 
Nassau.  The  finest  statues  of  this  century 
are  those  of  George  Villiers,  Duke  of  Buck- 
ingham, and  his  wife,  at  the  northwest  of 
Henry  VII.  's  chapel.  The  effigy  of  the 
Duke,  in  rich  armor  of  the  time  of  Charles 
I.,  lies  with  folded  hands  in  the  usual 
medieval  pose.  The  face  is  fine  and  well 
modeled,  and  the  casting  is  very  good. 
The  allegorical  figures  at  the  foot  are  cari- 
catures of  the  style  of  Michelangelo,  and  are 
quite  devoid  of  merit,  but  the  kneeling 
statues  of  the  Duke's  children  are  designed 
with  grace  and  pathos.  A  large  number  of 
very  large  and  handsome  marble  and  ala- 
baster tombs  were  erected  throughout  Eng- 
land during  the  seventeenth  century.  The 
effigies  are  poor  and  coarse,  but  the  rich 
architectural  ornaments  are  effective  and 
often  of  beautiful  materials,  alabaster  being 
mixed  with  various  richly-colored  marbles 
in  a  very  skillful  way.  Nicolaus  Stone 
(1647),  who  worked  under  the  supervision  of 
Inigo  Jones,  appears  to  have  been  the  chief 
English  sculptor  of  this  time.  During  the 
eighteenth  century  English  sculpture  was 
mostly  in  the  hands  of  Flemish  and  other 
foreign  artists,  of  whom  Roubiliac  (1695- 
1762),  Schumaker  (1691-1773),  and  Bysbrack 
(1694-1770)  were  the  chief.  The  ridiculous 
custom  of  representing  Englishmen  of  the 
eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries  in  the 
toga  or  the  armor  of  an  ancient  Roman 
was  fatal  alike  to  artistic  merit  and  eikonic 
truth,  and  when,  as  was  often  the  case,  the 
wig  of  the  Georgian  period  was  added  to  the 
costume  of  a  Roman  general,  the  effect  was 
supremely  ridiculous.  Nollekens  (1757- 
1823),  a  pupil  of  Schumaker's,  though  one 
of  the  most  popular  sculptors  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  was  a  man  of  very  little  real 
ability.  John  Bacon  (1740-1799)  was  in 
some  respects  an  able  sculptor. 

John  Flaxman  (1755-1826)  was  in  England 


294 


SCULPTURE: 


the  chief  initiator  of  the  classical  revival. 
For  many  years  he  worked  for  Josiah 
Wedgwood,  the  potter,  and  designed  for 
him  an  immense  number  of  vases  covered 
with  delicate  cameo-like  reliefs.  Many  of 


KING   ARTHUR   BY    PETER   VISCHER.      INNSBRUCK. 

these,  taken  from  antique  gems  and  sculp- 
ture, are  of  great  beauty,  though  hardly 
suited  to  the  special  necessities  of  fictile 
ware.  Flaxman's  large  pieces  of  sculpture 
are  of  less  merit,  but  some  of  his  marble 
reliefs  are  designed  with  much  spirit  and 


classic  beauty.  His  illustrations  in  outline 
to  the  poems  of  Homer,  Aeschylus  and 
Dante,  based  on  drawings  of  Greek  vases, 
have  been  greatly  admired,  but  they  are 
unfortunately  much  injured  by  the  use  of 
thickened  outline  on  one  side 
of  the  figures, — an  unsuc- 
cessful attempt  to  give  a  sug- 
gestion of  shadow.  Among 
Flaxman's  many  other  works 
the  most  celebrated  is  the 
Shield  of  Achilles. 

During  the  first  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century  the  prev- 
alence of  a  cold,  lifeless 
pseudo-classic  style  was  fatal 
to  individual  talent,  and 
robbed  the  sculpture  of  Eng- 
land of  all  vigor  and  spirit. 

It  may  be  well  understood 
that  the  Renaissance  move- 
ment did  not  affect  the  slug- 
gish Germans  as  quickly  as 
it  did  the  more  sensitive 
Gauls.  Still  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury found  in  Germany  a 
movement  going  on  for  a 
more  natural  order  of  sculp- 
ture; and  the  happy  return 
to  nature,  which  had  stirred 
the  Italians  so  deeply,  was 
destined  to  work  out  greater 
results  in  art  than  mere  theo- 
ries and  speculations.  The 
schools  in  Southern  Germany, 
Nuremberg  and  Swabia  were 
the  first  to  feel  this  move- 
ment from  Italy,  while  the 
schools  of  the  Rhine,  Sax- 
ony, Prussia  and  the  north- 
ern provinces  were  related 
more  closely  with  the  art  of 
the  Netherlands.  In  this 
period  appear  the  names  of 
Peter  Vischer  and  Adam 
Craft.  After  their  names 
there  is  no  sculptor  worthy  of  special  notice 
until  we  come  to  the  name  of  Andreas 
Schlueter  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and 
even  his  sculpture  is  too  much  tinged  with 
the  wild  methods  of  Bernini  to  be  of  great 
moment  in  the  history  of  art. 


MEDIEVAL,  RENAISSANCE  AND  DECADENCE. 


295 


GALLERY    OF    HISTORIC    FRENCH    SCULPTURE    IN   THE   ART    INSTITUTE    OF    CHICAGO. 


Pediment  of  the  old  Custom  House,  Rouen. 
Diana  bv  Coysevox.     Louvre. 

Nymph  by  Magnier.     Versailles.     "       Tomb  of  Francis  If.  and  Wife.     Nantes,  7505. 
Three  Graces  by  Pilon.     Louvre.  Tomb  of  Evrard  de  Fouillon.     Amiens,  ij  Cen. 


Relief  over  entrance  to 
Chateau  de  la  Ferte-Milon. 


F 


RENCH    RENAISSANCE    AND 
DECADENCE    SCULPTURE.  (24) 


The  only  real  Renaissance  may  be 
said  to  have  taken  place  in  Italy. 
Outside  of  that  country,  where,  as  the  poet 
says,  everything  sings,  the  word  Renaissance 
is  used  with  a  foreign  significance;  and  it 
was  more  the  fusion  of  the  national  style  of 
architecture  with  the  Italian.  Before  the 
fifteenth  century  that  wonderful  and  com- 
plete development  of  Romanesque  and 
Gothic  architecture — the  glory  of  medieval 
France,  and  the  despair  of  modern  Gaul — 
was  accompanied  by  a  development  in  sculp- 
ture hardly  less  magnificent. 

This  sculpture  met  the  common  fate  of 
later  stages  in  art,  over-elaboration;  and 
thus  was  easily  supplanted  in  the  fifteenth 
century  by  the  new  sculpture  introduced 
from  Italy  through  the  mediation  of  several 
Italian  sculptors.  The  great  chateaux,  pub- 
lic buildings,  private  houses,  and  finally 
churches  were  treated  with  sculptural  deco- 
ration in  the  Renaissance  style. 


While  the  time  and  the  birth  of  Jean 
Qoujon  is  still  being  debated,  the  fact 
is  recognized  that  he  is  easily  the  most 
distinguished  sculptor  of  the  sixteenth 
century  in  force  and  in  originality  of  con- 
ception, in  bold  and  rapid  execution,  tem- 
pered with  a  certain  classic  grace.  His 
most  famous  works  are  the  reliefs  on  the 
Fontaine  des  Innocents  and  upon  the 
Louvre,  which  have  been  copied  in  this 
country,  and  may  be  seen  in  the  Museums. 

No  sculptor  of  any  great  merit  appears  to 
have  arisen  in  France  during  the  seven- 
teenth century,  though  some,  such  as  the 
two  Coustons,  had  great  technical  skill. 
Pierre  Puget  (1622-1694)  produced  vigorous 
but  coarse  and  tasteless  work,  such  as  Milo 
devoured  by  a  Lion.  Other  sculptors  of 
the  time  were  Simon  Quillian,  Frangois  and 
Michael  Anguier,  and  Antoine  Coysevox 
(1640-1720),  the  last  a  sculptor  of  Lyons, 
who  produced  some  fine  portrait  busts.  He 
worked  largely  in  terra-cotta,  and  modeled 
with  great  spirit  and  invention,  though  in 
the  sensual,  unsculpturesque  manner  prev- 


296 


SCULPTURE: 


alent  in  his  time.  In  the  following  century 
Jean  Antoine  Houdon  (1740-1828),  a  sculptor 
of  most  exceptional  power,  produced  some 
works  of  the  highest  merit,  at  a  time  when 
the  plastic  art  had  reached  a  very  low  ebb. 
His  standing  colossal  statue  of  St.  Bruno  in 
St.  Maria  degli  Angeli  at  Rome  is  a  most 
noble  and  most  stately  piece  of  portraiture, 
full  of  commanding  dignity  and  expression. 
His  seated  statue  of  Voltaire  in  the  foyer  of 
the  Theatre  Frangais  is  a  most  striking 
piece  of  life  like  realism.  Houdon  may,  in 
fact,  be  regarded  as  the  precursor  of  the 
modern  school  of  French  sculpture  of  the 
better  sort.  About  the  middle  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  a  revolution  was  brought 
about  in  the  style  of  sculpture  by  the  sud- 
denly revived  taste  for  antique  sculpture.  A 
period  of  dull,  pseudo-classicism  succeeded, 
which  in  most  cases  stifled  all  talent  and 
reduced  the  plastic  arts  to  a  lifeless  form  of 
archaeology.  Regarded  even  as  imitations, 
the  works  of  this  period  are  very  unsuccess- 
ful ;  the  sculptors  got  hold  merely  of  the  dry 
bones,  not  of  the  spirit  of  classic  art;  and 
their  study  of  the  subject  was  so  shallow  and 
unintelligible  that  they  mostly  picked  out 
what  was  third  class  for  special  admiration, 
and  ignored  the  glorious  beauty  of  the  best 
works  of  true  Hellenic  art.  Thus  in  sculp- 
ture, as  in  painting  and  architecture,  a 
study  which  might  have  been  stimulating 
and  useful  in  the  highest  degree,  became  a 
serious  hindrance  to  the  development  of 
modern  art,  and  this  not  only  in  France  but 
also  in  the  other  countries  of  Europe. 


To  sum  up,  we  have  seen  that  the  causes 
that  gave  the  years  between  Angelo's  death 
and  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  the 
name  of  the  Decadent  era  was  the  substitu- 
tion of  a  mere  mechanical  dexterity  for 
thought,  and  the  exaltation  of  costly  materi- 
als at  the  expense  of  subject  matter.  Prod- 
igality and  luxury  choked  the  inspiration 
and  evolution  that  belong  to  simplicity  and 
truth  in  life,  and  the  result  was  inevitable. 
The  work  of  the  time  is  characterized  by 
affectation  and  an  utter  lack  of  genuine 
simplicity.  It  was  a  period  analogous  to  the 
era  of  decadence  that  followed  after  the  art 
of  Praxiteles  in  350  B.  C.  Between  its  in- 
ception and  the  happy  period  inaugurated 
by  the  German  critics,  Winckelmann  (1717- 
1768)  and  Lessing  (1729-1781),  which  looked 
to  a  classical  revival  as  the  only  salvation 
possible,  there  lived  in  various  European 
cities  some  men  who,  though  regarded  by 
their  contemporaries  as  artists  of  the  first 
rank,  and  in  some  respects  justly  so,  cannot 
be  placed  in  the  same  class  as  the  masters  of 
the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  or, 
indeed,  with  some  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. These  men  will  be  remembered  in 
art,  not  so  much  for  the  work  they  did,  since 
that  was  tainted  by  a  too  close  following  of 
the  antique,  as  for  their  earnest  desire  to 
raise  art  to  a  loftier  plane  than  it  had  occu- 
pied since  the  death  of  Angelo.  They  were 
great  in  spirit  rather  than  in  accomplish- 
ment, for  in  straining  too  constantly  after 
the  antique,  they  lost  sight  of  Nature  itself, 
which  was  the  source  of  all  Greek  inspiration. 


DEPARTURE    OF    THE   VOLUNTEERS    OF    I7Q2    BY    F.    RUDE. 


tty  (Pourse 
^tt 


and 

iDccoratiotb 


IN  THEIR  HISTOICT 
-DEVELOPMENTS  PRINCIPLES 

HDITOR,»1N  *  CHIEF 

EDMUND  BUCKLEY.A.M.Jk.DoUniversityofChicago 

CONSt/LTlJVG  EDITORS 

J. M .HOPPIN,1>.1>.,  Yale  University 

ALFRED  V.CHURCHILL,A.M.,  ColumtiaUnivcrrity 


fu/fy    Illuminated 


NATIONAL    ART    SOCIETY 
Chicago 


Copyright,  1907,  by  W.  E.  ERNST. 


RELIEF   ON    THE   PAVILION    DE    FLORE,    PARIS,    BY    J.    B.    CARPEAUX.       (SEE   P.    3Ol). 


Sculpture  of  the  Nineteenth   Century. 


BY 


LORADO  TAFT. 

INSTRUCTOR    IN    SCULPTURE,    ART   INSTITUTE   OF    CHICAGO. 


FRENCH  SCULPTURE. (i) 
There  is  one  land   at  least  where 
even  in  this  modern  day  the  sculp- 
tor's   art    is    at    home,    where   its 
appreciation   is   not   an  acquired   taste  nor 
its  practice  a  "survival. "     In  France  sculp- 
ture's title  is  clear;  its  lineage  runs  back  for 
centuries      From   the   days   of   the  earliest 
church  builders  there  has  always  been  sculp- 
ture in  that  fascinating  land.     The  Gothic 
cathedral   alone   could  have   suggested  the 


thought  that  architecture  is  "frozen  music." 
The  decorations  of  these  glorious  piles  are 
eloquent  of  the  skill  as  well  as  of  the  faith 
of  those  who  builded.  Each  chisel  stroke 
was  a  prayer,  and  love  guided  the  cunning 
hands  which  wrought  out  "to  the  glory  of 
God"  these  rare  traceries  and  noble  sculp- 
tures. 

Thus  launched,  the  statuary's  art  has 
never  lost  its  hold  upon  the  people  of 
France.  The  "artistic  succession"  has  never 
been  broken.  Each  century  has  had  its 


299 


300 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


great  name.  Every  year  the  beautiful 
churches  and  palaces  and  parks  have  grown 
richer  in  memorials  and  decorations.  And 
every  year,  too,  the  number  of  sculptors  has 
increased.  To-day  there  must  be  many 
thousands  of  them,  big  and  little,  practicing 
their  sturdy  art  in  the  ateliers  of  Paris. 

In  the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury all  sculptors  were  under  the  sway  of 
the  so-called  classic  influence.  All  Europe 
was  "doing  Greek,"  as  it  fondly  imagined, 
though  little  enough  would  an  old-time 
Hellenic  sculptor  have  recognized  of  his  art 
in  the  elegantly  polished  limbs  and  sedu- 
lously cold  and  formal  poses  of  that  sophisti- 


GENERAL  BONAPARTE  BY  D.  D  ANGERS. 


cated  age.  It  was  a  fashion  which  endured 
long  and  was  sufficiently  absurd;  but  after 
all  it  was  a  better  fashion  than  that  which 
had  dictated  the  exaggerated,  theatrical  art 
of  the  preceding  period.  Sculpture  had 
made  one  step  towards  its  own  rightful 
form.  "Simplicity"  was  the  watchword. 
A  simplicity  which  now  seems  to  us  amus- 
ingly ostentatious  became  the  rule. 

There  are  always  two  or  three  men  in  a 
thousand  who  are  unwilling  or  unable  to 
conform  with  the  mutable  many.  Houdon 
had  been  of  this  kind.  He  belongs  in  date 
(1741-1828)  to  the  eighteenth  century,  but 
in  spirit  he  is  of  the  nineteenth — indeed  of 


our  very  day.  His  portraits  stand  out  in  a 
period  of  conventional  art,  sole  guarantees 
of  a  better  era.  They  represent  no  fash- 
ion; their  author  was  a  law  unto  himself. 
He  bowed  only  unto  nature,  studied  her 
alone;  and  to-day  when  the  very  names  of 
his  clever  and  "successful"  colleagues  are 
forgotten,  that  of  Houdon  has  been  exalted 
to  a  place  in  the  kingly  line  of  genius. 
Chaudet,  Pradier  and  Bosio  were  men  of  un- 
doubted talent,  but  they  had  nothing  in  par- 
ticular to  say  and  went  with  the  current. 
Their  works  interest  us  to-day  only  as  illus- 
trations of  the  taste  of  the  period. 

David  d'Angers  earned  for  himself  eternal 
fame  and  the  gratitude  of  all  posterity 
through  his  wonderful  medallions.  No 
greater  master  of  relief  ever  lived.  The 
Parisian  "medallists"  of  to-day  may  surpass 
him  in  delicacy  of  finish,  but  for  vigor  and 
endless  resource  of  invention  he  has  not 
been  approached.  "Whether  the  subject  be 
intractable  or  not  seems  to  have  made  no 
difference  to  David."  His  statues,  on  the 
other  hand,  with  the  exception  of  the  aca- 
demic Philopoemon  of  the  Louvre,  are  awk- 
ward and  displeasing.  The  Bichat,  in  the 
Ecole  de  Medecine,  falls  but  little  short  of 
caricature.  The  much-praised  pediment  of 
the  Pantheon  is  bold,  but  hard  and  in  no 
sense  beautiful. 

The  greatest  name  in  the  first  half  of  the 
century  is  that  of  Francois  Rude  (1784-1855). 
Rude's  position  is  an  interesting  one.  He 
was  not  insensible  to  the  spirit  of  the  time. 
A  schoolman  and  a  teacher,  he  professed 
the  theories  of  the  so-called  "classic"  style, 
and  when  not  particularly  inspired,  pro- 
duced work  as  harmless  and  commonplace 
as  that  of  his  colleagues.  But  he  was  a 
great  man  in  spite  of  this  policy  of  non-re- 
sistance, perhaps  a  greater  artist  than  he  him- 
self realized.  For,  time  and  again,  we  find 
him  rising  to  splendid  heights,  and  once 
at  least  he  becomes  sublime,  in  spite  as  it 
were  of  all  of  his  theories  and  everyday 
practices.  His  life  is  too  fine  and  suggest- 
ive to  be  squeezed  dry  in  a  few  lines  here. 
Let  the  reader  rather  turn  to  Hamerton's 
monograph  and  then  to  the  group  of  the 
Departure  on  the  Arc  de  Triomphe,  the 
greatest  thing,  the  most  inspired  work  ever 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


301 


wrought  by  a  French 
sculptor.  (See  the  cut, 
p.  298.)  Even  had  Rude 
never  created  this  mar- 
vel his  dead  Cavaignac 
of  Montmartre  and  his 
superbly  living  Gaspard 
Monge  at  Beaune  would 
have  insured  him  a 
place  among  the  mas- 
ters. 

Of  Rude's  many  pu- 
pils two  were  destined 
to  win  enduring  fame. 
Jean  -  Baptiste  Carpeaux 
(1827-1875)  lived  but 
forty-eight  years,  yet 
no  sculptor  has  so  left 
his  impress  upon  exter- 
nal Paris  since  Jean 
Goujon.  In  the  garden 
of  the  Tuileries  is  his 
early  group,  the  terri- 
ble tragedy  of  Ugolino 
and  his  clinging,  fam- 
ished boys.  The  Pa- 
vilion de  Flore  bears  as 
a  jewel  the  incompara- 
ble relief  of  the  flower 
nymph  and  attendant 
rougish  babies.  On  the 
fagade  of  the  Opera  is 
that  marvel  in  stone, 
the  Dance;  and,  crown- 
ing the  fountain  of  the  Observatory,  the 
Four  Quarters  of  the  World  are  repre- 
sented by  women,  to  whom  Love  has  appar- 
ently delegated  his  responsibility  of  making 
the  earth  turn  round.  There  are  other 
things  in  Paris  by  Carpeaux,  marvelous 
busts  like  that  of  Gerome,  and  many  small 
vivacious  works.  The  sculptor's  life  was 
full  of  feverish  activity,  and  his  works  par- 
took of  its  animation.  They  fairly  sparkle. 
Their  play  light  and  shade  is  wonderful,  their 
joyousness  exuberant.  They  are  an  unfail- 
ing delight  to  the  eye.  I  never  pass  the 
Opera  House  without  looking  at  the  group; 
while  of  the  Pavilion  de  Flore  I  never  saw 
anything  but  the  relief.  (See  cut,  p.  299.) 

Barye  died,  as  did  Carpeaux,  in  1875,  but 
was  a  much  older  man,  since  the  great  "ani- 


THE    DANCE    BY    J-B.    CAKPEATX. 

malist"  was  born  in  1795.  Like  Carpeaux, 
again,  he  was  a  unique  personality,  standing 
out  in  strong  contrast  from  all  of  his  asso- 
ciates. While  Carpeaux's  nymphs  capered 
and  laughed  in  the  very  faces  of  the  Acad- 
emy's self-conscious  creations,  Barye's  won- 
derful little  bronzes  were  likewise  bewilder- 
ing and  delighting  all  but  the  "elect. "  They 
were  viewed  with  suspicion  by  the  critics, 
because  of  their  very  spontaneity.  But  in 
the  end  their  merit  won  recognition.  That 
Barye's  decorative  figures  and  groups  are 
equally  fine  we  are  assured  by  high  authori- 
ties. To  me  these  larger  works  are  of  but 
moderate  interest.  So  much  has  been  writ- 
ten on  this  great  artist  that  we  may  well 
guard  our  space  for  the  less  familiar  names 
of  our  own  time. 


302 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


OURANG-OUTANG    AND    SAVAGE.       E.    FREMIET. 


F 


R  E  N  C  H 

tinned.  (2) 


SCULPTURE.  —  Con- 


Since  the  death  of  Barye,  Em- 
manuel Fr^miet  (1824 — )  has  been 
the  unchallenged  leader  of  the  French  ani- 
mal sculptors.  This  means,  of  course,  that 
there  is  no  greater  living  artist  in  that  line 
of  work.  He  was  not  a  pupil  of 
Barye,  as  is  generally  supposed,  but 
studied  under  the  direction  of  his  uncle, 
the  sculptor  Rude.  One  feels  in  all 
his  work  the  assurance  which  comes 
from  thorough  knowledge.  His  taste 
is  not  always  so  satisfactory.  We  re- 
call those  horrors  of  various  salons: 
The  Death  Struggle  of  the  Hunter  and 
Bear,  the  Gorilla  Carrying  off  a  Negro 
Woman,  and  his  recent  group  show- 
ing the  death  grapple  between  an 
enormous  orang-outang  and  a  savage, 
where  the  beast,  having  gotten  the  ad- 
vantage of  his  adversary  with  a  grip 
of  iron  about  his  neck,  strangles  him 
to  death.  However,  Fre"miet  has  done 
monumental  works  of  great  beauty, 
and  we  can  forgive  him  these  excur- 
sions into  the  region  of  horrors  when 
we  understand  that  the  groups  were 
destined  to  a  museum  of  natural  his- 
tory and  not  a  public  square.  And 
really,  you  forget  after  the  first  shock 


how  dreadful  they  are 
in  your  admiration  of 
their  superb  and  mas- 
terly modeling.  But  it 
is  in  his  quieter  subjects 
that  M.  Fre"miet's  work 
becomes  dignified  and 
therefore  more  truly 
sculptural.  Especially 
fine  is  that  solid,  impas- 
sive Torch-bearer  of  the 
Hotel  de  Ville.  The  in- 
tensely alert  face  con- 
trasting with  the 
straight  architectural 
lines  of  horse  and  rider 
and  torch  gives  this 
composition  a  peculiar, 
subtle  power,  an  illu- 
sion of  life.  No  amount 

of  gesticulation  could  have  been  so  convinc- 
ing. Hardly  less  monumental,  though  sug- 
gesting motion,  is  the  Knight  Errant.  There 
is  a  feeling  of  mass  and  of  irresistible  mo- 
mentum in  this  work  which  with  its  perfect 
medieval  character  give  it  an  impressiveness 
seldom  found  in  modern  art. 

The  Louis  d'Orleans,  which  stands  in  the 


LOUIS  D'ORLEANS  BY  E.  FR£MIET. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


3°3 


quadrangle  of  the  restored  chateau  at 
Pierrefonds  is  generally  referred  to  as  Fre- 
miet's  masterpiece.  In  this  class  of  work 
he  is  perfectly  at  home,  and  makes  no  mis- 
takes. One  feels  that  no  living  artist  could 
give  more  truly  the  old-time  character,  for 
this  sculptor  knows  archaeology 
as  he  knows  anatomy.  The 
Louis  has  to  an  unusual  degree 
the  ever-present  dignity  of 
Fremiet's  riders,  comporting  so 
well  with  the  monumental  char- 
acter of  these  compositions. 
One  feels  that  this  grim  warrior 
and  the  armored  battle  horse 
must  be  living  creatures,  their 
stillness  is  so  nervous  and  in- 
tense. 

Fremiet's  Joan  of  Arc  is  well 
known.  She  has  stood  for  many 
years  on  the  Rue  de  Rivoli,  a 
very  effective  and  beautiful 
statue,  and  a  great  favorite 
with  the  Parisians.  The  only 
trouble  with  this  really  excel- 
lent work  is  that  a  greater  ar- 
tist has  had  a  yet  loftier  and 
more  satisfying  vision  of  the 
Maid  of  Orleans.  Paul  Dubois 
has  spoiled  for  us  all  other  repre- 
sentations of  the  gentle  warrior. 

M.  Fre"miet  is  represented  in 
the  Luxembourg  by  a  very 
amusing  early  work,  Pan  and 
Young  Bears,  a  young  faun 
stretched  on  the  ground  feed- 
ing honeycomb  to  a  couple  of 
bear  cubs.  The  faun's  laughter 
at  the  greediness  of  his  ungainly 
little  guests  is  contagious. 

At  the  Exposition  of  1900  this 
prolific   artist    displayed  eight 
important   works  in  the  decen- 
nial section.     In  the  retrospec- 
tive   exhibit    nine    others   ap- 
peared, while  among  the  man- 
ufactured bronzes  his  name  was  everywhere 
to  be  seen.   The  larger  groups  of  recent  date, 
like  the  St.  George  and  St.  Michael,  are  some- 
what hard  and  dry  in  treatment,  and  the  re- 
lief of  the  Man  and  Young  Bear  of  the  Stone 
Age  is  hopelessly  bad  in  both  composition  and 


technique;  but  in  smaller  works  the  aged 
fingers  show  no  loss  of  cunning.  Certain  of 
them  are  indeed  among  the  finest  things 
that  the  great  sculptor  has  ever  pro- 
duced. 

Another   worthy    name   in   this   field    of 


CHARITY    BY    P.    DUBOIS.       (SEE    PAGE    304). 

sculpture  is  that  of  Auguste  Cain  (1822- 
1894).  His  large  groups  are  almost  as  well 
known  in  this  country  as  in  France. 

In  the  entrance  hall  of  Chicago's  Art 
Institute  are  to  be  seen  four  of  the  choicest 
pieces  of  modern  sculpture,  the  casts  of 


3°4 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


those  famous  figures  which  Paul  Dubois 
(1829 — )  modeled  for  the  tomb  of  General 
Lamoriciere  in  the  cathedral  of  Nantes. 
Here  sits  the  ideal  of  Military  Courage,  with 
watchful  eye  and  resolute  mouth;  Faith, 
the  slender  girl,  her  pure  face  and  clasped 
hands  upraised ;  venerable  Meditation,  with 
thought-furrowed  brow ;  and — worthy  to  be 
called  greatest — all-beneficent,  all-satisfying 
Charity.  To  their  creation  the  leader  of 
modern  French  sculpture  consecrated  sev- 
eral years  of  loving  toil.  They  in  turn 


PASTEUR    KY    P.    DUBOIS. 


assured  him  his  enviable  position  of  chef 
(Thole,  and  stand  to-day  among  the  triumphs 
of  contemporaneous  art.  They  won  for  the 
sculptor  the  medal  of  honor  of  the  Salon  of 
1876,  and  the  highest  honors  of  the  Exposi- 
tion of  1878. 

The  story  of  M.  Dubois's  beginning  in  art 
is  an  unusual  one.  He  showed  no  precocity. 
He  had  reached  the  age  of  twenty-six 
before  l  'the  call"  came  to  him.  After  which 
he  made  up  for  lost  time.  In  two  years  M. 
Dubois  had  made  the  progress  of  six  or  eight 


years  of  ordinary  student  life.  Indeed,  the 
teacher  had  nothing  more  to  give  him. 
Though  past  the  age  of  competition  for  the 
prize  of  Rome,  he  was  fortunate  enough  to 
be  able  to  make  the  trip  to  Italy.  The  work 
of  the  early  masters  of  the  Renaissance, 
painters  and  sculptors  alike,  appealed  to  him 
strongly;  the  Eternal  City  made  a  profound 
impression  upon  him,  but  even  more  potent 
was  the  charm  of  Florence.  Here  at  last  he 
felt  himself  at  home,  and  Donatello  was  his 
.  friend.  His  grasp  of  the  significance  of  the 
early  Italians  meant  not  only  freedom  for 
himself  but  the  emancipation  of  a  national 
art.  From  it  the  whole  French  school  re- 
ceived a  new  baptism. 

The  first  important  result  of  the  visit  was 
a  little  St.  John  the  Baptist,  which  was 
sketched  in  Florence  and  afterward  modeled 
in  Rome.  It  was  sent  to  the  Salon  of  1863, 
along  with  the  beautiful  but  very  classic  Nar- 
cissus. Both  stand  to-day  in  the  Luxembourg 
gallery.  Theodore  Child  has  happily  called 
the  little  John  the  ''forerunner"  of  the  new 
movement.  It  met  with  an  instant  success, 
and  turned  the  eyes  of  all  the  young  sculp- 
tors toward  Florence  and  the  "primitives." 
In  1865  appeared  the  charming  little  Flor- 
entine Singer,  which  had,  likewise,  a  great 
popularity.  We  could  understand  better  the 
reason  for  it  if  it  were  possible  to  picture  to 
ourselves  the  tiresome  monotony  of  most  of 
the  sculpture  of  that  date,  the  weight  of  tra- 
dition under  which  the  great  body  of  French 
sculptors  grievously  labored.  We  of  Amer- 
ica should  learn  to  appreciate  it,  for  our  new 
sculpture  is  inspired  by  this  same  modern 
French  school,  led,  if  not  founded,  by  Paul 
Dube.s;.  It  means  with  us  the  blessed  ad- 
vance from  Greenough  and  Randolph  Rogers 
to  St.  Gaudens,  French  and  MacMonnies. 

The  "classic  school"  was  swept  out  of 
sight.  Donatello  was  canonized  saint  of  the 
new  faith,  the  re-renaissance.  There  have 
been  extremes  and  reactions  during  the 
wonderful  thirty-five  years  of  aritstic  devel- 
opment which  have  gone  by  since  then,  but 
M.  Dubois  has  never  had  to  resign  his  proud 
place  as  leader.  He  has  taken  his  honors 
modestly,  yet  with  dignity.  He  has  done 
his  work  deliberately  and  made  no  mistakes, 
His  unshaken  preeminence  at  the  head  of  a 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


305 


hundred  brilliant  rivals  is  due 
as  much  to  his  quiet,  well-bal- 
anced temperament  as  to  his 
artistic  skill.  His  art  has  made 
him  a  man  of  culture.  He 
writes  with  a  vigorous  pen,  he 
is  an  excellent  musician,  and  as 
a  painter  he  has  won  honors 
second  only  to  his  triumphs  in 
the  sturdier  art.  As  director 
of  the  Ecole  des  Beaux  Arts 
for  many  years  he  has  rendered 
a  great  service  to  the  State  and 
to  the  cause  of  art  ediication. 

Space  fails  me  to  describe 
his  other  great  works.  I  must 
name,  however,  the  wonderful 
busts  of  Paul  Baudry,  Henner 
and  Pasteur,  the  noble  eques- 
trian statue  of  le  Connetable 
cle  Montmorency  at  Chantilly, 
and  finally  the  matchless  Jeanne 
d'Arc  of  the  Salon  of  1895. 

This  statue  was  first  shown 
at  the  Exposition  of  1889  in 
plaster,  but  the  fastidious  sculp- 
tor was  not  satisfied  with  it. 
Back  it  went  to  his  studio.  The 
position  of  the  horse's  head 
was  changed  entirely,  and  the 
harness  was  considerably  elaborated.  These 
are  the  visible  alterations,  but  in  reality 
every  part  was  subjected  to  the  unhasting 
scrutiny  of  the  most  relentless  of  critics. 
No  less  than  twelve  years  it  occupied  the 
center  of  his  studio,  Like  all  that  is  great- 
est, this  work  requires  time  for  its  apprecia- 
tion. Its  simplicity  defies  and  confounds 
one.  She  is  not  the  Joan  of  the  stage.  She 
does  not  shout  at  you  like  so  much  of  French 
art.  Not  even  is  her  mouth  open.  She 
does  not  wave  her  sword;  it  is  lifted  to 
heaven,  and  all  unconscious  of  us  the  sweet, 
maidenly  face  is  turned  upward,  "whence 
cometh  aid."  "Not  in  my  strength,  but  in 
thine,  O  Lord,"  is  what  I  hear  her  say. 
This  statue,  a  recumbent  figure  in  marble 
of  the  late  Due  d'Aumale  and  four  busts, 
supplemented  by  a  group  of  paintings — 
seven  masterful  portraits — comprised  M. 
Dubois's  impressive  exhibit  at  the  Exposi- 
tion of  1900.  The  retrospective  exhibit  was 


JOAN    OF  ARC  BY  P.    DUBOIS. 

enriched  by  most  of  his  early  works.  Their 
concurrent  testimony  is  that  their  author 
has  never  made  a  mistake.  Every  one  of 
them  is  good  sculpture;  simple,  contained, 
dignified;  yet  rich  in  color  and  life,  and 
above  all  "nobly  artistic"  without  taint  of 
commonness,  much  less  of  sensuality. 


F 


RENCH  SCULPTURE.—  Continued. 
(3) 


Henri  Chapu  (1833-1891)  will  be 
remembered  for  two  works,  his 
noble  Joan  of  Arc  Listening  to  the  Voices, 
and  the  beautiful  La  Jeunessc  of  the  monu- 
ment to  Regnault  in  the  Ecole  des  Beaux 
Arts. 

It  has  been  said  of  Chapu  that  he  was  per- 
haps the  only  eminent  sculptor  of  his  time 
whose  inspiration  was  clearly  the  antique. 
With  him  it  was  a  real  inspiration,  not  some- 


306 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


JOAN    OF    ARC    BY    H.    CHAPU. 

thing  assumed.  It  was  an  attitude  of  mind; 
a  working  basis.  He  did  not  strive  to  "do 
Greek,"  and  his  work  showed  nothing  of  the 
effort  of  many  of  his  contemporaries;  he 
simply  conceived  things  in  the  lofty  imper- 
sonal way  which  we  call  classic,  concerning 
himself  with  the  ideal  instead  of  the  varia- 
ble, accidental,  multiform  phases  of  nature. 
Such  a  personality  as  his  exercises  a  refin- 
ing, uplifting  influence  upon  its  generation, 
but  can  have  no  direct  following.  It  is 
unique  and  inimitable. 

Among  the  treasures  of  modern  French 
sculpture,  brought  us  by  the  Columbian 
Exposition,  there  was  nothing  more  striking 
than  The  First  Funeral,  by  Louis  Ernest 
Barrias.  (See  the  cut,  p.  20.)  As  the 
name  implies,  it  represents  the  burial  of 


Abel.  In  a  group  of 
three  figures  the 
father  of  the  race  is 
seen  bearing  in  his 
arms  the  limp  body, 
while  Eve  bendj  to 
kiss  the  cold  brow  of 
her  martyred  son. 

When  this  magnifi- 
cent group  was  ex- 
posed in  the  Salon  of 
1883  it  was  imme- 
diately recognized  as 
one  of  the  great 
works  of  the  century. 
Its  pure  and  lofty 
sentiment  appealed 
to  all;  the  technical 
execution  was  be- 
}rond  criticism.  The 
contrast  of  the 
Adam's  sturdy 
strength  with  the 
rare,  soft  curves  of 
the  mother's  form, 
and  the  thorough 
deadness  of  the 
youthful  body,  borne 
so  tenderly;  the  fa- 
ther's wondering  sor- 
row, the  mother's 
uncontrollable  grief, 
so  pathetically  ex- 
pressed —  all  these 

things  proved  this  to  have  been  a  real  labor 
of  love  with  the  great  man  that  had  con- 
ceived it  and  caressingly  wrought  it  from 
the  gigantic  block  of  spotless  stone.  It  is 
said  that  Barrias  did  the  entire  work  of 
chiseling  these  figures,  which  are  considera- 
bly above  life  size,  and  that  he  spent  three 
years  upon  them.  What  an  unsuspected 
outlay  of  thought  and  toil  and  money  such  a 
work  represents!  What  happiness  in  the 
doing!  What  a  joy  forever  to  those  that 
really  see  it! 

A  French  critic  has  called  this  group  "the 
chef  d'oeuvre  of  our  modern  sculpture." 
Brownell  demurs  to  such  sweeping  praise, 
but  says:  "It  may  be  justly  termed,  I 
think,  the  most  completely  representative  of 
the  masterpieces  of  that  sculpture.  Its 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


307 


triumph  over  the  prodigious  difficulties  of 
elaborate  composition  'in  the  round' — diffi- 
culties to  which  M.  Barrias  succumbed  in 
the  'Spartacus'  of  the  Tuileries  Garden — 
and  its  success  in  subordinating  the  de- 
tails of  a  group  to  the  end  of  enforcing 
a  single  motive,  preserving  the  while 
their  individual  interest,  are  complete. 
Nothing  superior  in  this  respect  has  been 
done  since  John  of  Bologna's  'Rape  of  the 
Sabines. '  ' 

M.  Barrias'  first  really  important  work 
was  the  Jeune  Fille  de  Megara,  sent  from 
Rome  in  marble  to  the  Salon  of  1870.  This 
graceful  figure  of  a  young  girl  seated  Turk- 
fashion  speedily  found  a  resting  place  in  the 
gallery  of  the  Luxembourg.  Twenty  years 
later  the  sculptor  used  the  same  motif  m  his 
bronze,  Jeune  Fille  de  Bou-Saada,  for  the 
tomb  of  Guillaumet,  the  painter  of  the  des- 
ert, in  the  cemetery  of  Montmartre.  The 
position  of  the  hands  is  reversed,  and  she  is 
represented  as  scattering  flowers  upon  the 
grave  It  is  interesting  to  compare  these 
two  figures  and  see  how  the  clinging  classic 
tradition  so  much  in  evidence  in  the  earlier 
work  has  given  way  to  a  very  personal  ex- 
pression in  the  figure  of  1890. 

The  Salon  of  1871  saw  the  Oath  of  Spar- 
tacus, referred  to  by  Brownell,  a  scholarly 
and  somewhat  impressive  work,  which  was 
put  into  marble  for  the  decoration  of  the 
Garden  of  the  Tuileries  in  1877. 

Each  year  offers  its  record  of  figures  or 
busts  by  Barrias,  but  space  will  allow  men- 
tion of  but  a  few  of  the  greater  works.  In 
1878  The  First  Funeral  was  exhibited  in 
plaster,  winning  for  the  sculptor  the  medal 
of  honor  of  the  year.  The  Salon  of  1887, 
which  brought  forth  Mercie's  Quand  Meme, 
made  public  Barrias'  version  of  an  almost 
identical  theme — The  Defense  of  Paris, 
which  stands  in  bronze  at  Courbevoie.  Then 
came  the  delightful  Young  Mozart  tuning 
his  violin,  the  thoughtful- browed  Bernard 
Palissy,  in  the  churchyard  of  St.  Germain 
des  Pres,  a  Joan  of  Arc  captive,  the  in- 
tensely real  and  yet  most  artistic  figure  of 
Dr.  Ricord,  and  that  exquisite  nude,  Nature 
Revealing  Herself  to  Science.  A  draped 
polychromatic  variant  of  this  theme  was  a 
beautiful  feature  of  the  Exposition  of  this 


NATURE  REVEALING  HERSELF  TO  SCIENCE.       L.  E.    BARRIAS. 


year.  (See  next  page).  One  would  have 
been  glad  to  overlook  there  M.  Barrias'  big, 
bombastic  monument  to  Victor  Hugo,  which 
marks  his  declining  power. 

Of  Delaplanche's  able  and  abundant  works 
we  can  cite  but  two  examples  illustrating 
two  phases  of  this  master's  skill.  Most  im- 
portant and  most  beautiful  of  all  his  concep- 
tions is  the  dreamy  Aurora  of  the  Luxem- 
bourg Gallery.  With  closed  eyes  and  arms 
raised  above  her  head,  lifting  a  drapery 
which  trails  behind  the  exquisite  nude  form, 
this  figure  of  ideal  beauty  seems  to  rise  in  a 
burst  of  morning  light.  To  model  a  nude 
so  well,  to  make  it  so  satisfactorily  true  and 


3o8 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


NATl'RE  REVEALING  HERSELF  TO  SCIENCE.       L.   K.    BARRIAS. 


at  the  same  time  so  thoroughly  free  from 
the  taint  of  realism  is  indeed  a  triumph.  It 
is  more  than  Falguiere,  with  all  his  clever- 
ness, ever  succeeded  in  doing. 

The  other  work  to  which  we  would  call 
attention  is  M.  Delaplanche's  fine  decora- 
tive figure  Security,  in  the  Chicago  Art  In- 
stitute collection,  which  gives  a  good  idea  of 
the  "bigness"  of  treatment  required  in  ex- 
terior sculpture.  The  freedom  of  pose  of  the 
limbs  and  the  subordination  of  detail  to  the 
general  mass  gives  this  work  a  generous  amp- 
litude, very  different  from  the  meagerness  cf 
most  of  our  decorative  sculpture  in  Amer- 
ica. 


F 


RENCH  SCULPTURE.—  Continued. 

(4) 


Rene  Saint-Marceaux  (1845)  is  an 
artist  of  peculiarly  nervous  temper- 
ament, whose  flights  of  fancy  extend  over 
a  wide  field.  His  best  known  works  are 
a  Harlequin,  which  does  not  particularly 
appeal  to  Anglo-Saxon  taste,  and  his  su- 
perb Genius  of  Death  Guarding  the  Secret 
of  the  Tomb.  (See  the  cut,  p.  69.)  To 
have  created  this  is  enough  for  one  man. 
That  the  motif  was  borrowed  from  one  of 
Michelangelo's  favorite  poses  does  not  de- 
tract from  its  power;  the  artist  has  made  it 
thoroughly  his  own.  Saint  Marceaux's 
busts  have  had  an  extraordinary  vogue  in 
the  past.  The  sculptor  seemed  to  possess  a 
secret  formula  for  making  eyes — eyes  that 
gaze  and  give  the  very  illusion  of  life.  His 
recent  works  are  quite  inferior. 

Alexander  Falguiere's   (1831-1900)   range 


AURORA    i;v    E     DELAPLANCHE. 


NINE  TEENTH  CEN  TUR  Y. 


3°9 


reminds  one  of  the  writings  of  Paul  Ver- 
laine;  while  most  zestful  in  "frankly  carnal 
creations,"  like  his  Diana  and  The  Lady  of 
the  Peacock,  he  now  and  then  rises  to 
heights  almost  spiritual,  as  in  the  Little 
Martyr,  of  the  Luxembourg,  and  particu- 
larly in  his  sympathetic  rendering  of  St. 
Vincent  de  Paul  in  the  Pantheon.  Though 
so  different  in  temperament,  Falguiere  and 
Rodin  stand  together  as  the  most  marvelous 
modelers  of  flesh  of  this  century.  Falguiere 
was  immensely  popular  with  the  French 
public  and  highly  esteemed  by  his  col- 
leagues, many  of  whom  were  likewise  his 
pupils.  Among  his  last  works  were  the 
spirited  Henri  de  la  Rochejacquelin,  and  the 
Cardinal  Lavigerie. 

Aiitoine  Mercie  is  a  southerner  by  birth, 
having  first  seen  light  in  Toulouse  in  1845. 
At  the  age  of  but  twenty-three  he  won  the 


ROCHEJACQUELIN   BY   J.    A. 


SECURITY    BY    DELAI'LANCHE. 

prize  of  Rome.  To  the  Salon  of  1872  he 
sent  from  Rome  his  David  After  the  Com- 
bat, one  of  the  most  pleasing  works  of  mod- 
ern sculpture.  There  is  a  confident  swing 
in  the  fine,  lithe  figure.  The  right  foot 
rests  upon  the  giant's  grim  head,  the  right 
arm  is  raised,  as  with  a  proud  gesture  he 
sheathes  his  sword.  The  joy  of  the  victor 
has  not  yet  chased  from  his  brow  its  threat- 
ening frown.  Altogether  it  is  a  thoroughly 
fine  thing,  whether  Donatello's  be  better 
or  worse. 

It  was  in  1875,  however,  that  M.  Mercie 
achieved  his  greatest  triumph,  with  a  mag- 
nificent work  which  ranks  as  highly  now  as 
it  did  at  that  time  when  it  took  all  Paris  by 
storm  and  won  for  the  young  sculptor  the 
medal  of  honor  of  the  Salon.  I  speak  of  the 
famous  group,  the  Gloria  Victis,  "Glory  to 
the  Vanquished."  It  represents  a  dying 
youth  borne  from  the  field  of  battle  by  a 
winged  Victory.  His  face  shows  the  last 
agony,  in  his  right  hand  he  still  grasps  his 
broken  sword,  the  left  is  raised  as  in  a  con- 
vulsive appeal  to  his  comrades.  The  figure 


of  Victory  is  very  beautiful ;  her  face  a  sub- 
tle blending  of  delicacy  and  strength.  Fol- 
lowing close  upon  the  events  of  1870  and 
1871,  this  artist's  dream  of  patriotism,  this 
poem  in  bronze  glorifying  the  defeated, 
struck  a  responsive  chord  in  the  heart  of  the 
French  public  and  raised  the  young  sculptor 
to  a  perilous  eminence  of  popularity.  Jules 
Clareti  wrote  that  it  was  worthy  of  an  artist 
of  the  Renaissance,  that  it  was  "purely  and 
absolutely  beautiful."  "C'est  la  strophe 
d'une  ode  immortelle,"  cried  another  en- 
thusiast. 

Now  came  in  quick  succession  the  Genius 
of  the  Arts  and  the  Tomb  of  Michelet.     The 


GLORIA   VICT1S    BY    A.   MERCIE. 

first  is  that  fiery  and  impetuous  work  which 
in  high  relief  forms  the  most  conspicuous 
decoration  of  the  south  fagade  of  the  Tuile- 
ries,  over  the  gateway  to  the  Place  du  Car- 
rousel. The  relief  with  which  h.e  has  com- 
memorated Michelet  is  one  of  the  most 
original  and  impressive  decorations  of  Pere 
Lachaise.  The  figure  of  the  genial  historian 
is  represented  as  recumbent,  the  eyes 
closed  in  the  last  sleep,  while  upon  the 
mouth  still  rests  the  memory  of  a  kindly 
smile.  The  upper  portion  of  this  great  com- 
position is  occupied  by  a  majestic  floating 
form,  the  artist's  symbolic  representation  of 
Truth. 


Quand  Meme,  which  we  may  freely  trans- 
late "In  spite  of  all,"  was  first  seen  in  the 
Salon  of  1 88 1.  It,  too,  has  a  patriotic  sig- 
nificance, being  a  group  to  commemorate 
the  heroic  defense  of  Belfort.  It  is  power- 
ful in  its  conception  and  picturesque  in 
treatment.  A  vigorous  Amazon  in  Alsatian 
peasant  costume  seizes  the  musket  from  the 
hand  of  a  falling  soldier. 

Next  followed  the  magnificent  tomb  of 
Louis  Philippe  and  his  queen  at  Dreux.  M. 
Mercie's  Le  Souvenir,  in  the  Luxembourg, 
a  seated  figure  with  closed  eyes,  is  the  re- 
plica of  a  tomb  decoration,  a  motif 'as  sweet 
and  impressive  as  those  gentle  partings 
which  the  Greeks  once  pictured  on  their 
memorials  to  the  dead.  In  the  Salon  of  1895 
M.  Mercie  exhibited  an  energetic  William 
Tell,  and  a  very  striking  conception  of  Jeanne 
d'Arc. 

Theodore  Child  speaks  of  "two  character- 
istics of  Mercie's  genius — intensity  of  feel- 
ing and  unerring  sentiment  of  beauty  in 
form,"  adding:  "I  use  the  word  'genius'  ex- 
pressly; for  M.  Mercie,  of  all  contemporary 
French  sculptors,  seems  the  most  gifted  by 
nature  and  the  most  favored  by  mysterious 
and  inexplicable  inspiration."  Brownell 
observes  more  cautiously  that,  "At  one 
epoch  in  any  examination  of  academic 
French  sculpture  that  of  M.  Mercie  seems 
the  most  interesting."  How  true  this  has 
been  in  his  own  case  the  writer  remembers 
well,  and  no  less  vividly  does  he  recall  the 
petulance  with  which  his  early  enthusiasm 
spurned  Mr.  Brownell's  reservations  and  his 
qualified  praise  of  this  sculptor's  triumphs. 
He  could  agree  heartily  when  he  read, 
"Mercie's  'Gloria  Victis'  is  very  fine ;  I  know 
nothing  so  fine  in  modern  sculpture  outside 
of  France";  but  that  it  should  be  called 
"rhetoric"  and  "prose"  stirred  him  to  the 
depths.  If  this  is  not  poetry,  what  is?  he 
asked.  Youthful  loyalty  has  been  somewhat 
weakened  by  the  passing  years.  The  Gloria 
Victis  is  still  beautiful,  but  there  are  modern 
works  which  move  one  more  deeply.  With 
all  his  skill  and  invention  and  unfailing 
taste,  M.  Mercie  has  added  nothing  to  his 
record  in  the  last  ten  years.  His  later 
works  are  trivial  and  quite  unworthy  of  his 
talent. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


F 


RENCH  SCULPTURE.— Concluded. 
(5) 


Many  will  recall  that  strange,  grim 
figure  which  rose  so  impressive  in 
the  south  court  of  the  Art  Palace  at  the 
Columbian  Exposition,  the  rugged  man 
who  clutched  a  gigantic  key  in  his  enor- 
mous hands,  whose  feet  were  big  and  ugly 
beyond  description,  and  whose  face  never- 
theless seemed  to  look  scorn  upon  the  posing 
puerilities  around  him.  He  stood  there 
erect  and  immovable,  like  a  solitary  tree 
with  gnarled  limbs,  amid  swaying  grasses 
and  impertinent  weeds.  You  can  look  at 
him  still  at  the  Art  Institute  of  Chicago. 
You  may  not  like  him,  this  stern  old  Sieur 
Eustache  de  St.  Pierre  of  centuries  ago,  as 
Rodin  has  conceived  and  fashioned  him ; 
but  you  cannot  fail  to  respect  him.  You 
are  sure,  too,  to  want  to  know  from  the 
first  what  the  figure  means  and  who  made 
it.  You  feel  an  extraordinary  creative 
mind  behind  it,  a  force  almost  terrible  in 
its  intensity. 

The  figure  alluded  to  is  one  of  six  which 
the  sculptor  has  combined  into  a  group  as 
original  in  its  united  effect  as  are  its  com- 
ponent parts.  The  story  which  he  has  de- 
sired to  recall  is  that  of  the  long  and  desper- 
ate defense  of  Calais  against  the  English, 
led  by  Edward  III.  After  a  protracted 
siege,  the  starved  city  was  obliged  to  capit- 
ulate, and  the  lives  of  the  inhabitants  were 
spared  only  upon  condition  that  the  six  lead- 
ing citizens  should  be  surrendered  for  death. 
They  were  to  be  brought  into  the  royal  pres- 
ence bearing  the  keys  of  the  city  and  clad 
only  in  their  shirts,  with  halters  about  their 
necks.  This  melancholy  procession  is  what 
the  great  sculptor  has  represented  in  such 
extraordinary  fashion,  with  an  art  so  vital, 
so  uncouth,  and  yet  so  fascinating. 

Auguste  Rodin  has  been  the  most  con- 
spicuous figure  in  French  sculpture  during 
the  last  fifteen  years  He  is  by  no  means  a 
favorite  with  his  brothers  in  the  craft,  but 
they  no  longer  deny  the  genius  of  the  man 
who  persisted  from  the  first  in  expressing 
his  own  individuality  in  everything  he  has 
done.  With  all  their  skill  the  sculptors  of 
Paris  seem  closely  related;  they  belong  to 


one  school.  Rodin  is  the  exception.  He 
has  always  stood  alone,  as  unmoved  by  the 
adulations  and  flattery  of  the  present  hour 
as  he  was  by  the  sneers  and  opposition  of 
those  younger  days.  This  sturdy  self-con- 
fidence and  power  are  recognized  and  appre- 
ciated now,  and  those  best  fit  to  judge  speak 
of  him  respectfully  as  a  very  great  master. 

The  first  figure  which  he  sent  to  the  Salon 
was  L'Age  d'Airain — "The  Bronze  Age." 
Up  to  this  time  he  had  been  unknown,  a  hired 
workman  in  the  studios  of  more  popular 
sculptors.  The  statue  was  so  remarkable 
in  conception  and  so  perfect  in  modeling 
that  the  jury  were  dumbfounded;  it  was  the 
work  of  a  master,  but  signed  by  an  unknown 
name.  In  their  bewilderment  the  author 
was  accused  of  having  cast  it  directly  from 
nature.  He  had  no  difficulty  in  disproving 
the  charge,  and  the  incident  made  him 
friends. 

A  year  or  two  later  his  "John  the  Bap- 
tist" was  exhibited.  In  this  figure  the  artist 
breaks  loose  from  all  tradition.  He  repre- 
sents "a  sort  of  ferocious  anchorite,  a  man 
of  powerful  frame  made  gaunt  by  fatigues 
and  fasts.  He  walks  with  long  strides,  very 
erect  upon  his  lean  legs.  His  feet  are  cal- 
loused by  the  stones  and  burning  sands  of 
the  road.  And  preaching  as  one  does  battle, 
he  makes  a  violent  gesture  which  seems  to 
scatter  anathemas.  His  face  is  illumined 
with  a  mystic  light,  his  mouth  vomits  impre- 
cations."  (See  page  312.) 

Probably  you  or  I  never  thought  of  John 
the  Baptist  in  that  way,  but  then  we  are  not 
Rodins.  History,  like  nature,  translates 
itself  variously,  seen  through  different  tem- 
peraments. Strangely  enough,  this  revolu- 
tionary work — now  one  of  the  features  of 
the  Luxembourg  gallery — attracted  but  lit- 
tle attention  for  the  time  being  in  Paris.  It 
was  too  strong,  too  virile  to  please,  and  so 
strange  that  the  critics  probably  did  not 
know  how  to  take  hold  of  it. 

Next  followed,  however,  a  series  of  busts 
which  could  not  be  neglected;  wonderful 
works  which  wrung  admiration  and  that 
highest  flattery — imitation — from  friends 
and  detractors  alike.  Among  these  heads 
one  recalls  vividly  the  portraits  of  Victor 
Hugo,  Rochefort,  Jean  P.  Laurens  the 


312 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


JOHN    THE    BAPTIST    BY    A.     RODIN. 


painter,  Dalon  the  sculptor,  Puvis 
de  Chavannes,  and  that  incompar- 
able Head  of  a  Woman  in  the  Lux- 
embourg. There  are  two  things 
especially  noticeable  in  all  of  these 
busts,  the  incisive  characterization, 
that  intensity  of  life  which  unmasks 
the  very  soul,  and,  almost  equally 
important  in  a  great  work  of  art, 
that  masterly  neglect  of  non-essen- 
tials, which  Rodin  understands  bet- 
ter perhaps  than  any  other  living 
sculptor.  There  is  no  "frittering 
away  of  the  general  effect  in  useless 
details."  With  him  cravats  and 
button-holes  are  of  small  importance 
compared  with  the  face.  The  Head 
of  a  Woman  has  some  of  the  most 
delicate,  mellow  modeling  that  I 
have  ever  seen,  the  perfection  of 
marble  cutting;  the  neck  and  bosom, 
likewise,  are  nothing  else  than  soft, 
white  flesh — art  can  go  no  further. 
Then  the  master  considered  his  work 


done.  With  a  sort  of  noble  petulance  he  has 
scratched  the  suggestion  of  drapery  into 
shape.  For  a  moment  he  has  played  with 
the  clay  and  pressed  the  loose  scraps  into 
semblance  of  flowers.  And  he  has  been 
very  careful  that  the  marble-cutter  should 
not  carry  them  any  further.  The  tooth  of 
the  tool  has  left  its  mark  on  all  this  subor- 
dinate portion  of  the  bust.  It  is  rendered 
purposely  uninteresting  in  order  that  the 
face  may  have  all  attention.  The  result  is 
one  of  the  greatest  works  of  sculpture  of  our 
time. 

M.  Rodin's  special  exhibit  this  exposition 
year  was  a  most  extraordinary  collection. 
There  were  things  of  marvelous  beauty  and 
originality  alongside  sketches  and  unfinished 
figures  distorted  and  sometimes  brutal  be- 
yond belief.  Here  were  the  famous  Dante 
Gates,  still  incomplete,  though  they  have 
been  the  artist's  task  for  years.  Here  stood 
the  misshapen  Balzac,  amorphous,  hideous, 
and  yet  impressive.  In  the  Art  Palace  one 
saw  that  luminous,  exquisite  group,  The  Kiss, 
a  work  so  great,  so  subtly  wrought,  so  sculp- 
turally compact  yet  so  free  within  its  bounds, 


HEAD    OF    A    WOMAN    BY    A.     RODIN. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


that  everything  near  looked  hard  and  am- 
ateurish. Certainly  M.  Rodin  is  a  riddle, 
and  his  work  the  most  perversely  captivat- 
ing of  all  that  is  done  in  these  days. 

Another  man  of  remarkable  talent  and 
facility  whose  art  approaches  most  nearly 
to  that  of  Rodin  in  its  unacadernic  character 
is  Jules  Dalou.  His  reliefs,  The  Republic 
and  the  Mirabeau  \vith  their  many  figures 
are  incredibly  difficult  problems  in  which  he 
has  acquitted 
himself  tri- 
um  phantly. 
His  recent 
monument  to 
the  Republic 
is  as  compact 
as  his  Dela- 
croix me- 
morial is  dif- 
fuse, but  in 
both  is  the 
same  rich 
p  a  1  p  i  t  ating 
play  of  light 
and  shade. 

A  u  he's 
Dante  is 
worthy  of 
either  of  the 
two  preced- 
ing masters 
with  whom 
his  name  is 
often  asso- 
ciated. Its 
author  has 
not  risen  to 
the  same 
height  a  sec- 
o  n  d  time. 

Bartholome  was  originally  a  painter,  but  his 
monument,  Aux  Morts,  "To  the  Dead,"  is 
a  greater  and  profounder  work  than  most 
of  his  sculptor  brethren  ever  conceived. 
Boucher's  early  robustness  is  growing  com- 
monplace. Puech  has  been  too  popular  for 
his  own  good.  He  has  never  equaled  his 
Muse  of  Andre*  Chenier.  His  elegance  is 
running  away  with  sturdier  qualities. 
Dampt's  occasional  works  are  very  interes- 
ting. Sicard  is  a  younger  man  of  great 


DANTE   BY   J.    P.    AUB£ 


promise.     Lefevre,  Charpentier  and  Dagonet 

have  each  done  one  great  work,  as  in  the 
past  did  Lanson,  Massoule,  Escoula,  and 
scores  of  others.  Hundreds  are  striving  in 
the  ranks  just  behind  these  men  who  have 
"arrived." 

Eclecticism  is  the  spirit  if  not  the  watch- 
word of  modern  French  sculpture.  The 
united  efforts  of  romanticism  and  of  nat- 
uralism have  beaten  down  all  barriers.  In- 
dividualism is  supreme.  Temperament 
alone  guides  expression.  The  result  is  the 
most  varied  art  that  the  world  has  yet  seen, 
a  range  from  the  unformed  Balzac  of  Rodin 
to  the  picturesqueness  of  Lefeuvre  and  the 
destructive  finish  of  Puech  In  art  as  else- 
where liberty  often  leads  to  license,  but 
without  liberty  is  death.  These  French 
masters  represent  a  living  force,  and  the 
sum  total  of  their  achievement  is  a  splendid 
contribution  to  the  art  of  our  time. 


s 


CULPTURE    IN     NORTHERN 
EUROPE.  (6) 


For  many  years,  during  at  least  the 
lifetime  of  an  entire  generation  of 
sculptors,  the  influence  of  Canova  and  of 
Thorwaldsen  dominated  all  effort  not  only 
in  Italy  but  throughout  Europe.  These 
men  were  not  great  when  compared  with 
the  mighty  creators  of  the  past,  but  they 
did  much  to  give  sculpture  a  recognized 
place  in  modern  life.  We  deprecate  the 
formal,  conventional  limitations  of  their  art, 
but  it  is  possible  that  men  of  more  positive 
originality  might  have  accomplished  less  at 
that  particular  period.  These  made  sculp- 
ture popular  without  degrading  it,  and  the 
venerable  craft  received  a  new  lease  of  life. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  two  leaders 
were  the  sons  respectively  of  a  marble-cut- 
ter and  of  a  wood -carver;  workmen  who 
knew  how  to  do  things. 

Canova's  art  has  been  treated  elsewhere, 
falling  as  it  does  largely  within  the  record 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  Bertel  Thor- 
waldsen (1770-1844)  was  Danish  in  origin 
only;  his  art  is  Italian,  though  he  believed 
it  to  be  Greek.  He  brought  to  it  the 
robustness  of  a  strong-bodied,  simple-mind- 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


ed  peasant,  and  his  life  work  in  no  small 
degree  contributed  to  the  general  advance- 
ment of  sculpture.  His  treatment  is  often 
archaic  and  hard.  He  had  little  charm, 
little  color-sense — using  the  term  sculptor- 
fashion  to  mean  relations  of  light  and  shade 
— and  personality  is  assiduously  obliterated 
from  all  of  his  figures.  Nevertheless  there 
remains  a  simple,  manly  directness  in  his 
approach  to  every  subject,  a  self-respecting 
dignity,  infinitely  superior  to  the  theatrical 
exaggeration  which  preceded  and  to  the 
meretricious  realism  of  much  current  art. 


FREDERICK   THE   GREAT,    BERLIN,    BY   C.   D.  RAUCH. 

What  Thorwaldsen  made  was  always  sculp- 
ture. 

The  Dane  left  no  successor  in  his  own 
land.  It  is  to  Germany  that  we  must  turn 
for  the  next  great  names,  outside  of  France. 
We  find  at  this  time  a  group  who  did  much 
to  revive  the  fallen  prestige  of  Teutonic 
art.  The  works  of  Danneker,  Schadow, 
Emil  Wolff  and  Tieck,  though  important  in 
the  evolution  of  taste,  may  be  passed  over 
lightly,  since  they  interest  us  but  little  to- 
day. 

While  Christian  Daniel  Rauch  (1777-1857) 


was  of  the  same  school,  having  studied  like- 
wise in  Rome,  he  was  a  stronger  artistic 
nature,  and  has  left  works  of  great  distinc- 
tion. In  his  memorial  to  Queen  Louisa  of 
Prussia  at  Charlotte  nburg,  he  was  favored 
with  a  beautiful  subject  which  he  treated 
with  much  tenderness  His  well-known 
monument  to  Frederick  the  Great  (Unter 
den  Linden,  Berlin)  is  one  of  the  greatest 
and  ablest  productions  of  the  first  half  of 
this  century.  The  labor  expended  upon 
such  an  assemblage  of  figures  is  incredible. 
Many  other  statues  and  memorials  in  Ber- 
lin and  throughout  Germany  testify 
to  the  industry  and  invention,  if  not 
imagination,  of  this  great  sculptor. 

August  Kiss,  a  pupil  of  the  above, 
is  generally  ranked  next  to  him.  He 
is  best  known  to  us  through  his  Ama- 
zon on  Horseback,  at  the  entrance  to 
the  Old  Museum  in  Berlin.  The  Luther 
monument,  at  Worms  by  Ernst  Riet- 
schel  (1804-1861),  although  distinctly 
sculptural  and  dignified,  is  very  hard 
in  execution.  The  poses  and  charac- 
terizations of  its  many  figures  are  ex- 
cellent, the  treatment  of  their  drapery 
is  often  bad. 

The  works  of  Johannes  Schilling 
likewise  betoken  a  refined,  spiritual 
nature.  His  groups  of  Night,  Morn- 
ing, Noon,  and  Evening,  on  the  Brlihl 
Terrace  in  Dresden,  are  full  of  charm, 
and  their  poetry  is  not  lost  through 
inadequate  handling.  Schilling's  re- 
liefs on  the  Niederwald  monument  are 
rather  "lean,"  but  are  sympathetically 
conceived.  The  Victories  blowing  the 
trumpets  are  effective  and  picturesque. 
The  colossal  Germania  has  the  faults  and  the 
qualities  of  recent  German  monumental  art. 
She  seems  florid  and  exuberant,  with  over- 
much detail,  and,  for  a  figure  which  is  in 
itself  a  monument,  has  scarcely  enough  of 
architectonic  quality.  Yet  she  is  adequate ; 
and  when  compared  with  Sch  wan  thaler's 
Bavaria  seems  even  contained  and  impress- 
ive. She  is  very  German,  and  as  a  national 
expression  this  is  perhaps  fully  as  important 
as  the  larger  attribute  of  style. 

The  decorations  of  the  picturesque  Palace 
Bridge  of  Berlin  are  now  quite  overshad- 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


3'5 


owed  by  new  and  better  work.  The  pseudo- 
classic  groups  by  Drake,  Shiefelbein,  Albert 
Wolff  and  others  are  all  exceedingly  me- 
chanical in  treatment,  and  even  their  com- 
positions are  uniformly  unpleasant  in  mass 
and  in  line.  Albert  Wolff  is  perhaps  at  his 
best  in  the  monument  to  Frederick  William 
III.  in  the  Lustgarten,  an  immense  tableau 
in  bronze.  Encke's  graceful  figure  of 
Queen  Louisa,  in  the  Thiergarten,  and 
Schaper's  Goethe  are  fortunate  in  their 
handsome  pedestals.  The  Goethe  monu- 
ment is  decorated  with  three  very  beautiful 
allegoric  groups. 

In  the  changes  of  the  last  thirty  years  a 
great  many  sculptural  decorations  have  been 
lavished,  upon  the  capital  of  the  German 
Empire.  Berlin  shows  to-day  a  marked 
tendency  towards  the  florid  and  theatrical, 
not  to  say  bombastic.  Monuments  to  roy- 
alty do  not  represent  what  is  best  in  contem- 
poraneous art.  The  perfunctory  works  of 
Reinhold  Begas,  like  the  recent  William  I. 
memorial,  though  undoubtedly  showing 
much  skill  and  a  certain  grandiose  inven- 
tion, are  far  from  pleasing  to  others  than 
Germans.  So  the  new  and  very  costly 
Washington  monument  in  Philadelphia,  the 
work  of  Rudolph  Siemering  of  Berlin,  a 
collocation  of  conscientiously  wrought  fig- 
ures, fails  completely  in  dramatic  power. 
This  gigantic  table-ornament  shows  no 
spontaneity;  it  looks  too  carefully  arranged. 
It  will  never  cause  a  thrill  of  exultation  nor 
a  pulse-beat  of  patriotism.  It  is  questiona- 
ble whether  even  a  larger  menagerie  around 
its  base  would  avail  to  that  end. 

Ludwig  Schwanthaler  (1802-1848),  the 
favorite  sculptor  of  King  Louis  of  Bavaria, 
ranks  close  to  the  American  MacMonnies 
in  the  rapidity  if  not  in  the  value  of  his  pro- 
duction. During  his  short  life  he  created  a 
vast  number  of  statues  and  reliefs  of  the 
stage-furniture  type,  which  give  a  superficial 
richness  to  the  fantastic  architecture  called 
into  existence  by  that  mad  monarch's  whim. 

At  the  Columbian  Exposition  we  first  be- 
came acquainted  with  the  work  of  Hun- 
drleser.  His  group,  Sleep,  now  in  the  St. 
Louis  Museum,  was  a  work  of  rare  beauty 
and  tenderness.  Very  different  but  de- 
lightfully modeled  was  Max  Baumbach's 


Siesta,  showing  an  obese  sleeping  faun,  a 
triumph  of  clever  marble-cutting.  The 
finest  thing  shown  by  the  Germans  in  Paris 
in  1900  was  Peter  Breuer's  Adam  and  Eve, 
a  noble  sculptural  composition,  modeled 
and  carved  in  masterful  fashion.  This 
received  a  medal  of  honor,  as  did  Robert 
Diez'  wild  fountain-motif,  The  Tempest,  a 
whirling  medley  of  figures,  horses  and 
marine  monsters. 

Other  names  of  prominence  in  German 
sculpture  are  Briitt,  Eberleln,  Herter, 
Hildebrand,  Unger  and  Franz  Stuck  the 
painter.  Of  the  younger  generation  the 
works  of  Freese,  Hahn,  Hoesel  and  Kruse 
are  especially  promising. 


s 


CULPTURE     IN     NORTHERN 
EUROPE.— Continued.  (7) 


Since  Thorwaldsen,  Denmark  has 
produced  no  sculpture  of  more  than 
local  reputation,  although  Saabye  and  others 
have  upheld  the  academic  traditions  with  no 
mean  ability.  The  great  painter  Kroyer 
has  modeled  many  excellent  busts  of  friends, 
some  of  which  were  seen  in  Chicago  in  1893. 
It  is  the  Norwegian  Stephan  Sinding,  how- 
ever, who  has  brought  prestige  to  Copen- 
hagen, his  adopted  city.  This  gifted  brother 
of  Christian  Sinding,  the  musical  composer, 
and  of  Otto  Sinding,  the  painter,  is  one  of 
the  greatest  sculptors  of  our  time,  a  man 
who  is  original  and  virile  in  everything  that 
he  does.  His  Captive  Mother,  shown  at  the 
Columbian  Exposition,  was  one  of  the  finest 
figures  in  the  entire  display.  Greater  still 
is  his  almost  elemental  A  Man  and  a  Woman, 
a  group  as  simple  and  compact  in  mass  as  it 
is  intense  in  its  emotional  expression.  One 
cannot  help  thinking  how  strange  such  art 
would  have  seemed  to  Thorwaldsen.  Can- 
ova,  we  may  be  sure,  would  have  thought  it 
crude  and  primitive. 

Another  Scandinavian  whose  promise  was 
left  but  half  fulfilled  through  untimely 
death  was  Per  Hasselberg.  His  poetic  and 
charmingly  etherial  Snowdrop  stands  in  the 
Art  Institute  of  Chicago.  The  Frog-girl,  a 
roguish  little  minx  of  quite  different  mood 
is  in  the  St.  Louis  Museum.  A  third  ex- 


316 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


CAPTIVE   MOTHER.       S.    BINDING. 

hibit  at  the  Columbian  Exposition,  the 
Water-lily,  was  of  yet  another  inspiration. 
Unlike  the  artists  of  worn-out  civilizations 
this  man  seemed  to  have  no  lack  of  distinct, 
poetic,  sculptural  ideas.  Such  men  as  Sind- 
ing  and  Hasselberg,  with  the  brilliant  Scan- 
dinavian painters  encourage  us  to  believe 
that  these  northern  lands  will  exert  a  great 
influence  upon  the  art  of  the  twentieth 
century. 

Holland,  the  home  of  so  much  beautiful 
painting,  has  had  no  sculptor  of  eminence 
since  the  distant  days  when  Claux  Sluter  led 
the  Gothic  carvers  of  Burgundy. 

Belgium  has  patronized  sculpture  gener- 
ously, and  offered  a  home  to  more  than  a 
few  of  France's  exiled  geniuses.  Naturally 
this  country  has  followed  the  fashions  and 
fluctuations  of  French  art.  Of  her  native 
sculptors  we  may  cite  Simonis,  Fraikin,  and 
Joseph  and  William  Geefs,  among  the 
elders.  Of  contemporaries  Constant  Meu- 
nier  may  be  called  the  Millet  of  sculpture, 
glorifying  as  he  does  the  life  of  the  laborer ; 
while,  to  continue  the  comparison,  J.  Lam- 
beaux  is  a  veritable  Rubens,  delighting  in 
fleshy  nude  figures  restless  and  exaggerated 
in  action.  These  with  Jules  Van  Bresbroeck 
received  medals  of  honor  at  the  Exposition 
of  1900.  Charles  Samuels'  quaintly  original 
monument  to  Charles  de  Coster — with  char- 
acters from  that  writer's  works — has  an  im- 
pressive power.  Van  der  Straeten's  chic 
little  ladies  of  fashion  are  excellent  of  their 
kind,  though  it  must  be  confessed  that  the 


kind  is  not  particularly  digni- 
fied. 

Of  a  strange  barbaric  note, 
yet  within  the  bounds  of  good 
sculpture,  were  those  early 
works  of  Mark  Antokolsky,  the 
Russian  Jew.  His  Ivan  the 
Terrible,  Nestor  the  Historian, 
head  of  Jaroslaw,  etc.,  have 
very  great  qualities.  His  Christ 
Bound  before  the  People  is 
much  admired  by  his  country- 
men, but  is  too  Russian  and  not 
sufficiently  ideal  to  please  a 
larger  public.  With  increasing 
popularity,  Antokolsky's  ideas 
have  become  less  independent 
and  the  robustness  of  his  work  has  disap- 
peared. His  exhibit  in  Paris  in  1900,  while  a 


SNOWDROP    BY    P.    HASSELBERG. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


triumph,  had  this  pathetic  side:  it  traced 
the  artist's  progress  from  the  splendid 
achievements  of  ardent  youth,  through 
stages  more  picturesque  and  fanciful  but 
less  serious,  to  the  commonplaces  of  the 
successful,  popular  artist. 

Other  Russians  who  have  done  interesting 
things  are  Bernstamm,*famed  for  his  busts 


IVAN    THE   TERRIBLE.       M.   ANTOKOLSKY. 


and  statuettes  of  distinguished  men ;  Qinz- 
bourg,  who  makes  a  specialty  of  the  pranks 
of  mischievous  children ;  Vallgren,  ingenious 
in  little  bronzes  and  the  curiosities  of  the 
"new  art"  movement;  and  the  various  men 
who  do  tiny  horses,  reindeer  and  sledges 
with  so  much  crispness  and  charm.  Most 
interesting  perhaps  of  all  is  Prince  Paul 
Troubetzkoi  of  Moscow,  who  studied  for 
some  time  in  Milan,  yet  was  not  spoiled  by 
it.  He  evolved  there  a  style  of  rapid 
sketchy  treatment  which  is  fascinating  in 
small  works,  if  less  convincing  in  figures  of 
life  size.  His  important  and  extraordinary 
exhibition  in  Paris  shared  with  that  of 
Antokolsky  the  highest  honors.  There  is  a 
zest  in  the  handling,  a  novelty  in  the  point 
of  view  of  the  Russians  which  give  their 
works  a  peculiar  attractiveness.  Our  ar- 
tists might  well  take  to  heart  their  'les- 
son of  independence  and  use  of  material  at 
hand. 


s 


CULPTURE 
EUROPE.  (8) 


3*7 


IN     SOUTHERN 


The  artist's  antipathy  to  modern 
Italian  sculpture  seems  to  the  lay- 
man, an  iniquitous  prejudice.  The  very 
things  that  artists  most  detest  in  this  factory 
work  are  what  the  average  purchaser  most 
delights  in.  Its  cheap  prettiness;  its  curi- 
osities of  realistic  carving;  its  mimicries  of 
laces  and  silks  and  feathers,  are  to  sculptors 
of  other  races  not  only  childish  but  posi- 
tively irritating.  The  smirking  faces  under 
transparent  veils  and  broad-brimmed  hats, 
the  coy  and  timid  bathers,  the  self-conscious, 
sentimental  dreamers,  the  everything  that 
is  common  and  vulgar,  without  sculptural 
inspiration,  without  grace  of  line  or  dignity 
of  significance,  are  the  works  which  the 
average  American  and  Englishman  prefer 
to  all  others.  These  nations  support  the 
Florentine  and  Milanese  workshops,  whose 
output  fills  our  houses  and  blockades  our 
parlor  windows. 

Crushed  under  the  weight  of  their  great 
inheritance,  the  Italians  are  the  most  disap- 
pointing, the  most  tantalizing  of  all  artists. 
The  noble  thoughts  which  the  great  masters 
gave  to  the  world  have  been  repeated  by 
insignificant  followers  for  centuries,  de- 
claimed as  empty  words,  until  to-day  Italian 
art  has  but  little  to  say  beyond  the  merest 
maundering.  It  has  grown  inarticulate 
through  its  own  facility  of  utterance.  There 
are  many  serious,  earnest  men  in  the  army 
of  Latin  sculptors  of  to-day  as  there  have 
been  throughout  the  century,  but  the  com- 
mon standard  is  so  low,  cleverness  counts 
for  so  much  and  ideas  for  so  little  that  even 
the  best  of  them  rise  but  seldom  to  great 
heights  whence  they  speedily  return  to  the 
safer  level  of  dexterous  nullity. 

Among  their  most  important  names  of  the 
first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  we  find 
Lorenzo  Bartolini  and  Pio  Fedi.  The  latter 
executed  a  group  called  the  Rape  of  Polyx- 
ena,  which  has  been  honored  with  a  place  in 
the  Loggia  dei  Lanzi  among  the  treasures 
of  the  past.  Gradually  the  bonds  of  classic 
tradition  became  loosened,  and  emancipated 
Italian  sculpture  like  a  drunken  man  reeled 
in  the  other  direction.  Giovanni  Dupre 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


RAPE    OF    POLYXF.NA    BY    P.    FEDI. 

(1817-1882)  was  strong  enough  in  person- 
ality to  put  soul  into  his  very  realistic  works. 
His  Pieta  is  conceived  in  a  large  and  rever- 
ent way.  His  Cain  is,  however,  but  a  care- 
ful study  of  a  low-browed  model.  Vincenzo 
Vela  (1822-1891),  no  less  realistic,  shows  at 
times  a  greater  reserve,  a  quality  which 
comports  so  well  with  sculptural  art.  His 
dramatic  Last  Day  of  Napoleon,  at  Ver- 
sailles, and  again  in  the  Corcoran  Gallery, 
displays  his  marvelous  skill  in  modeling  and 
carving. 

Giulio  Monte verde  illustrates  only  too  well 
the  fhitterings  of  a  spirit  of  real  ideality  in 
the  suffocating  atmosphere  of  modern  Italy. 
His  Dr.  Jenner  is  a  wonder  of  conscientious 
realism  well  applied.  Some  of  his  monu- 
ments are  of  poetic  inspiration,  and  among 
them  are  faces  and  forms  of  great  beauty, 
but  every  one  of  these  is  injured  by  the 
artist's  self-confident  emphasis  of  details 


which  it  were  much  better  to  suppress.  Too 
often  the  work  has  no  other  reason  for  exis- 
tence than  this  display  of  technic.  Maccag- 
nani's  scenes  of  cruelty,  gladiatorial  con- 
tests, etc.,  are  treated  in  a  hard  but  work- 
manlike fashion.  Ciferielli,  who  is  now  a 
professor  in  Berlin,  puts  so  much  finish  upon 
his  works  that  even  his  Italian  brothers  con- 
sider them  "too  well  done";  they  are  abso- 
lutely photographic. 

Medals  of  honor  were  given  at  the  Expo- 
sition of  1900  to  Ba/zaro,  Biondi  and 
Gemito,  whose  works  vie  with  each  other  in 
cleverness,  if  not  in  elevation  of  thought. 
Among  Biondi's  picturesque  little  genre 
groups  shown  in  the  Columbian  Exposition 
was  The  Spree,  where  two  or  three  peasants 
were  shown  steadying  each  other  and  evi- 
dently shouting  the  Italian  versions  of  "We 
won't  go  home  till  morning."  This  miserable 
little  subject  the  sculptor  has  since  developed 
with  wonderful  skill  into  the  extraordinary 
group,  The  Saturnalia,  which  attracted 
more  attention  than  any  other  sculpture  at 
the  Exposition  of  1900,  and  finally  won  a 
medal  of  honor.  The  term  group  is  a  mis- 
nomer here,  because  in  reality  the  com- 
position is  a  string  of  nine  life-size  figures 


CAIN    BY    G.    DUPRE. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


319 


supposed  to  be  parading  the  streets  of  Rome 
abreast.  Six  of  these  old-time  revelers,  arm 
in  arm,  advance  in  an  irregular  line;  a 
handsome  Roman  of  the  decadence,  on  one 
side  his  wife  and  boy,  on  the  other  a  harlot, 
a  soldier  and  a  slave.  These  have  been 
joined  in  their  wanderings  by  three  drunken 
priests,  one  of  whom  offers  some  gallantry 
to  the  beautiful  young  matron.  She  beams 
an  appreciative  -smile  upon  him,  but  her 
husband  flashes  a  look  of  indignant  protest. 
The  priests  are  hideous  creatures  with  the 
small  heads  of  degenerates,  and  beastly  faces. 
Two  of  them  support  each  other,  but  the 
third,  with  enormous  Falstaffian  paunch,  has 
slipped  to  the  pavement,  where  he  sits  iir 
idiotic  bliss  and  helplessness. 

The  whole  work  was  realistic  to  the  mi- 
nutest detail  of  costume  and  anatomy.  The 
hands  "went"  with  the  figures  and  were  as- 
tonishingly like  real  hands,  especially  the 
flabby  hands  of  those  unspeakable  priests. 
It  is  no  wonder  that  the  crowds  gathered; 
for,  if  the  group  were  made  of  real,  stuffed 
Romans,  it  could  not  have  been  more  true 
to  nature,  nor  less  in  keeping  with  the  prin- 
ciples of  good  sculpture.  It  was  the  art  of 
the  Musee  Grevin  and  Mme.  Tussauds  car- 
ried to  the  last  degree  of  perfection  and 
translated  into  bronze.  Its  methods  and  its 
subject  were  in  perfect  harmony.  This 
disgustingly  clever  performance  seemed  to 
the  writer  like  a  kind  of  a  "wake"  over 
the  corpse  of  a  once  noble  national  art 
which  produced  the  Augustus  and  later 
the  St.  George  and  the  Moses,  which  has 
long  been  dead  but  which  men  refuse  to 
bury. 

The  sculpture  of  Spain  and  Portugal 
shares  the  clever  realism  of  Italian  art,  but 
is  less  attractive  to  Anglo-Saxon  tastes.  The 
idea  of  a  just  balance  between  the  impor- 
tance of  a  theme  and  the  labor  to  be  ex- 
pended in  giving  it  expression  seems  never 
to  occur  to  these  people.  A  hideous  cross- 
eyed beggar,  covered  with  warts  and  wrin- 
kles seems  to  them  a  worthy  and  stimulating 
problem  to  be  rendered  with  topographical 
accuracy.  At  the  recent  Exposition  a  life- 
size  group  representing  a  struggling  peasant 
in  the  hands  of  a  brutal  dentist  confirmed 
the  impression  made  upon  the  writer  by  an 


equally  felicitous  work  at  the  Columbian 
Exposition  in  which  figured  an  energetic 
old  hag,  a  fine-toothed  comb  and  an  unwill- 
ing child! 

Auguste  Querol,  a  sculptor  of  dignity  and 
distinction  was  the  Spanish  juror  in  Paris  in 
1900.  Medals  of  honor  were  bestowed  upon 
Mariano  Beulliure  y  Oil,  and  Miguel  Blay 
y  Fabrega. 

The  Portuguese  Antonio  Lopes,  who  like- 
wise received  a  medal  of  honor  in  the  liberal 
distribution  to  all  nations,  showed  a  num- 
ber of  interesting  works,  some  of  which 
were  almost  fine.  As  a  rule,  however,  it 


LAST  DAY  OF  NAPOLEON  BY  VELA. 


may  be  said  that  the  sculptural  sense  is 
nearly  extinct  in  these  southern  lands,  and 
that  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  produce 
really  great  art  until  they  have  felt  a  new 
baptism. 


ENGLISH    SCULPTURE.  (9) 
The  English  have  long  patronized 
sculpture,  but  have  themselves  pro- 
duced few  notable  works.      Though 
there  are  to-day  more  good  British  sculptors 
than  ever  before,  they  can  still  be  counted 


320 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


upon   the   fingers,    and   their  achievements 
put  no  one  of  them  in  the  first  rank. 

English  sculpture  often  shows  skill,  dig- 
nity and  thought,  but  it  is  generally  lacking 
in  the  suggestion  of  spontaneity.  It  is  too 
thoughtful  perhaps.  Its  grace  is  too  evi- 
dently calculated.  It  has  not  been  done 
from  love  of  the  art,  but  as  a  recent  writer 
says,  "from  a  sense  of  duty."  There  are 
exceptions,  but  the  majority  of  English 
sculptures  impress  one  in  this  way.  This 
great  colonizing  people,  superb  in  govern- 
ment, commerce,  engineering  and  manufac- 
ture, is  painfully  perfunctory  and  ineffective 
in  its  artistic  production.  It  has  no  accu- 
mulated momentum  of  art  tradition  and 
enthusiasm.  The  English  have  bought 
sculptures  for  centuries;  have  embellished 
public  buildings  and  country  seats  almost  as 
lavishly  as  did  the  Romans,  but  the  parallel 
with  those  earlier  days  is  rendered  complete 
by  the  fact  that  here  too  the  art  has  been 
exotic,  the  decorators  men  of  another  race. 
The  present  generation  has  seen  a  certain 
change  in  this  respect.  Sculptures  are  no 
longer  looked  upon  as  curiosities  for  mu- 
seums, or  mere  symbols  of  wealth.  Men  of 
intellect  and  social  position  are  turning  to 
this  unusual  profession.  They  study  in 
France  and  return  with  new  and  liberal 
ideas.  Their  art  becomes  to  them  what  all 
art  should  be,  a  means  of  expression.  If 
they  bring  no  inherited  facility  nor  even  a 
favoring  attitude  of  mind  to  the  work,  they 
at  least  dignify  it  in  the  eyes  of  their  coun- 
trymen and  win  the  respect  of  the  guild 
through  their  solid  scholarly  attainments. 
Writers  like  Edmund  Gosse  have  welcomed 
them  and  sounded  their  praises, — and  later 
acknowledged  with  disappointment  that  the 
results  have  not  justified  all  that  enthusias- 
tic lovers  of  beauty  had  hoped.  But  such 
evolutions  are  slow,  even  in  the  most  favor- 
able environment.  The  present  generation 
is  preparing  the  way  for  another.  It  is 
making  artistic  tradition.  Though  a  hostile 
atmosphere  of  commercialism  may  suffocate 
some,  though  artistic  atavism  claim  now  and 
then  a  victim  from  among  the  most  promis- 
ing, there  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  the 
English  sculpture  of  the  twentieth  century, 
however  meager  compared  with  the  output 


of  France  and  America,  will  be  something 
fine  and  strong,  and,  above  all,  distinctly 
racial. 

The  opening  years  of  the  century  found 
John  Flaxman  (1755-1826)  the  central  figure 
in  English  sculpture.  He  was  a  man  of  at- 
tractive personality  and  of  some  education. 
His  lectures  on  sculpture  before  the  Royal 
Academy  are  still  read.  Endowed  with  a 
fertile  and  graceful  imagination,  he  made 
countless  designs  which  he  was  unable  to 
execute  in  sculptural  form.  His  drawings, 
illustrative  of  the  Iliad,  Odyssey,  etc.,  are 
a  mine  of  suggestions  for  students  of  sculp- 


AN   ILLUSTRATION    FOR   THE    ODYSSEY    BY    FLAXMAN. 
Ulysses  implores  Kirke  to  restore  his  companions. 

ture,  and  are  held  in  high  esteem  in  the  best 
schools.  In  the  actual  practice  of  his  art 
Flaxman's  undisputed  field  was  low  relief, 
For  twelve  years  he  was  in  the  employ  of 
his  friend  Josiah  Wedgwood,  decorating  the 
famous  Wedgwood  ware.  His  figures  are 
in  the  pseudo-classic  style  of  the  time. 
Flaxman's  monuments,  of  which  there  exist 
a  considerable  number,  are  far  from  success- 
ful, being  steeped  in  allegory  and  burdened 
by  historical  allusions. 

Chantrey's  monuments  in  Westminster 
Abbey  show  the  same  characteristics,  and 
are  but  curiosities  to-day.  His  busts  are 
often  dignified  and  impressive.  (1782-1841). 

John  Gibson  (1791-1866)  was  a  pupil  of 
Canova,  and  his  work  shows  the  grace  and 
delicacy  of  his  master.  His  experiments  in 
coloring  statuary  are  interesting. 

Alfred  J.  Stevens  (1817-1875)  is  a  bril- 
liant exception  in  the  line  of  more  or  less 
conventional  imitators  of  classic  art.  His 
ability  comes  close  to  genius.  Though  a 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


321 


pupil  of  Thorwaldsen,  his  art  is  inspired  by 
that  of  Michelangelo.  His  life  was  full  of 
disappointments,  and  his  work  was  not  ap- 
preciated until  after  his  death,  when  that 
splendid  fragment,  the  Wellington  memo- 
rial in  St.  Paul's,  was  first  shown  to  the 
public. 

Thomas  Woolner  (1825-1892),  of  the1 
"pre-Raphaelite  Brotherhood,"  made  a  real 
contribution  to  sculpture  in  his  faithful  por- 
traits of  the  great  English  writers  and  states- 
men of  the  century.  Armstead,  like  so 
many  artists  of  old-time  Florence,  began  his 
career  as  a  silversmith.  His  reliefs  on  the 
Albert  memorial  are  the  only  artistic  fea- 
tures of  that  great  ostentatious  pile.  Foley's 
sculptures  are  hard,  dry  and  insistent  of  un- 
important detail.  This  is  illustrated  by  the 
figure  of  Prince  Albert  and  the  group  of 
Asia  in  the  monument  just  mentioned.  The 
Hungarian  Boehm,  a  royal  favorite  of  pains- 


• 


SLUGGARD    HY    LORD    F.    LEIGHTON. 


TEUCER    BY    H.    THORNYCROFT. 


taking  ability,  rose  once  above  the  common- 
place in  his  admirable  statue  of  Carlyle  on 
the  Thames  embankment. 

Lord  Leighton  was  a  better  modeler  than 
painter.  His  Sluggard  is  a  truly  sculptural 
conception,  and  ranks  among  the  best  of 
English  works.  A  few  years  ago  Hamo 
Thornycroft  would  have  been  named  as  the 
unquestioned  head  of  the  younger  group  of 
British  sculptors,  his  Teucer  and  his  Mower 
being  among  the  finest  things  yet  done  in 
England.  But  despite  his  artistic  ancestry, 
Mr.  Thornycroft  seems  to  have  succumbed 
to  his  surroundings.  His  draped  figure,  The 
Joy  of  Life,  shown  in  1895,  was  hopelessly 
artificial,  while  his  Cromwell,  at  the  Paris 
Exposition  of  1900,  was  easily  the  worst 
piece  of  sculpture  shown  by  the  English, 
being  very  crude  and  commonplace. 


322 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


Probably  Onslow  Ford  (born  1852)  is  the 
best  sculptor  among  them  to-day.  His  work 
is  always  good,  if  never  great.  It  suggests 
Parisian  training,  though  in  reality  he 
studied  in  Munich.  His  General  Gordon  on 
a  camel  is  a  very  original  and  daring  con- 
ception for  a  monument.  His  Shelley  me- 
morial has  much  distinction  and  is  almost 
beautiful.  The  nude  figure  of  the  young 
poet  is  fine,  but  the  work  as  a  whole  is  too 
small  to  be  impressive.  The  draped  figure 
of  the  Muse  is  weak  and  inadequate,  and 
various  parts  of  the  composition  seem  irrele- 
vant. Ford's  seated  Hamlet  (Sir  Henry 
Irving)  is  sculpturally  composed,  though  too 
realistic  and  monotonous  in  detail.  His 
Echo,  a  standing  figure  of  a  young  girl,  is 
one  of  the  most  refined  things  thus  far  pro- 
duced in  England.  Mr.  Ford's  portrait 
busts,  while  not  great  works  when  compared 
with  those  of  Dubois  or  Rodin,  are  thor- 
oughly good  presentments  of  real  people, 
well  constructed  and  suavely  modeled. 

Harry  Bates,  recently  deceased,  made 
beautiful  reliefs,  such  as  the  Homer,  Psyche, 
etc.,  well  known  through  platinotype  repro- 
ductions. George  Frampton's  interesting 
and  sometimes  successful  experiments  in 
decorative  work,  combinations  of  various 
metals,  etc.,  are  worthy  of  note.  Thomas 
Brock  has  done  some  dignified  figures. 
Charles  J.  Allen,  Alfred  Drury,  Goscombe 
John,  David  McGill,  Bertram  McKennal  and 
Henry  A.  Pegram  are  all  men  of  ability 
who  sometimes  do  interesting  work. 


AMERICAN    SCULPTURE. (10) 
The  record  of  our  national  art  de- 
velopment is  bounded  by  the  short 
span  of  a  single  century.   In  writ- 
ing of  other  countries  the  chronicle  of  the 
last  hundred  years  is  but  a  fragment,  a  brief 
sequel    to   the   story   of   ages  of   endeavor. 
Our  earliest   pioneer   sculptors    were   born 
well  within  the  nineteenth  century.      One 
can  hardly  realize  that  our  actual  achieve- 
ment from  the  very  kindergarten  stage  of 
a  nai'f   art  to    the    proud    position    held  by 
American  sculpture  in  the  Paris  Exposition 
of   1900  has  been  the  work  of  three-score 


years  and  ten,  has  been  ceen  in  its  entirety 
by  not  a  few  men  now  living. 

The  evolution  of  taste  has  been  so  rapid 
that  many  a  worthy  artist  has  been  left 
stranded  and  bewildered  in  the  midst  of  his 
fading  fame.  Thirty  years  ago,  for  instance, 
the  scholarly  W.  W.  Story  was  honored  as 
our  leading  American  sculptor.  Within 
fifteen  years  his  prestige  had  completely  dis- 
appeared, and  to-day  his  dry,  amateurish 
arrangements  of  drapery  over  lay  figures 
are  mere  historical  curiosities.  Despite 
Hawthorn's  enthusiasm,  nothing  could  be 
more  artificial  than  his  Cleopatra  in  the 
Metropolitan  Museum,  nothing  more  dis- 
tressingly weak  than  his  Jerusalem  in  the 
Pennsylvania  Academy. 

Coming  at  a  time  when  all  the  world  was 
looking  to  the  dead  art  of  Rome  for  inspira- 
tion, it  is  not  strange  that  America's  first 
essays  in  sculpture  should  have  been  timid 
and  purely  imitative. 

The  struggles  of  the  self-taught  John 
Frazee  of  New  Jersey  are  interesting  but 
without  special  significance  in  the  annals  of 
our  art.  American  sculpture  may  be  said 
to  begin  approximately  with  Hiram  Powers' 
Greek  Slave  (1843),  a  work  of  immense  pop- 
ularity in  the  earlier  days.  It  was  a  chaste, 
nude  figure  which  looked  to  our  fathers  very 
much  like  those  in  the  museums  of  Europe. 
They  could  not  see  why  it  was  not  fully  as 
good.  The  clock-maker  of  Cincinnati  had 
done  his  best,  and  if  his  ideal  work  was  not 
as  complete  a  success  as  his  justly  famous 
Inferno,  with  its  cheery  waxwork  devils,  it 
was  a  step  upward.  It  prepared  the  way 
for  better  things,  turning  a  nation's  thoughts 
toward  the  ideal.  When  the  better  things 
came  our  people  were  somewhat  better  able 
to  appreciate  them,  thanks  to  the  efforts  of 
these  sturdy  pioneers,  these  boyish  enthu- 
siasts, who  were  tasting  for  the  first  time  the 
pleasure  of  "making  things."  Let  us  not 
begrudge  them  this  popularity;  let  us  re- 
joice rather  that  the  whole  country  admired 
their  marble  dolls  It  was  right.  It  is  the 
way  that  art  must  be  born  and  grow.  The 
Greeks  did  worse  things  than  the  Slave,  not 
so  many  decades  before  the  building  of  the 
Parthenon.  But  as  intelligent  people,  we 
should  be  able  to  know  the  place  of  these, 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


323 


our  "primitives. "  Their  work  has  been  in 
vain,  if  we  have  made  no  progress  in  the  last 
half  century.  The  fact  is  that  Hiram  Pow- 
ers, Horatio  Greenough,  Clark  Mills  and 
others  of  that  early  group  are  not  to  be 
mentioned  in  the  same  breath  with  our 
great  artists  of  to-day.  They  were  but 
novices  in  their  profession.  We  thank  them 
for  their  effort,  but  we  must  classify  them 
where  they  belong. 

Powers  was  a  representative  "cute" 
Yankee,  of  little  education,  but  possessed  of 
some  natural  refinement  and  vast  ingenuity. 
Horatio  Greenough  of  Boston — born  likewise 
in  the  year  1805 — was  of  another  class.  He 
was  a  college  man  and  came  of  a  cultured 
and  well-to-do  family.  His  ideals  were 
high,  but  to  them  he  seldom  attained.  He 
met  with  many  disappointments  and  misfor- 
tunes. The  greatest  of  these  was  in  connec- 
tion with  the  work  which  premised  most  and 
longest,  the  work  which  he  was  able  to 
carry  to  completion,  his  colossal  statue  of 
Washington  for  the  national  capitol.  Into 
this  great  figure  he  put  his  best  effort.  He 
conceived  it  on  a  very  high  plane;  he  la- 
bored on  it  for  nearly  eight  years,  and  the 
execution  is  dignified  and  workmanlike,  if 
not  masterly.  Greenough  felt  that  our 
greatest  citizen,  the  father  of  his  country, 
was  worthy  of  apotheosis,  and  with  dim 
vision  of  the  Olympian  Zeus  in  his  pillared 
sanctuary  regnant,  he  conceived  his  Wash- 
ington as  a  majestic,  god-like  figure  en- 
throned beneath  the  vaulted  arch  of  the 
Capitol  and  gilded  by  the  filtered  rays  of 
far-falling  sunlight.  The  conception  was 
exalted,  grandiose,  and  in  another  age 
might  have  succeeded.  But  the  sculptor 
was  not  big  enough  for  the  work  which  he 
had  dreamed,  nor  had  he  control  of  certain 
very  essential  details  of  his  mise  en  scene. 
The  ponderous  statue  was  found  to  be  too 
heavy  for  the  building,  and,  hastily  with- 
drawn, remains  to-day  outside  the  promised 
land,  exposed  to  the  elements  and  to  the 
pitiless  gibes  of  an  unimaginative  gener- 
ation. 

Then  came  Clark  Mills  from  his  Charleston 
stucco  shop  and  offered  to  make  an  eques- 
trian statue  of  General  Jackson.  Congress 
found  his  proposition  a  fair  one,  and  with- 


out model  or  advice  this  untrained  man 
created  our  first  equestrian  statue.  The 
Jackson  of  the  rampant  steed  is  one  of  the 
sights  of  Washington;  amazing  and  awe- 
inspiring.  Hopelessly  bad  from  an  artistic 


GREEK    SLAVE    BY    H.    POWERS. 


standpoint,  its  shortcomings  are  forgotten 
in  wonder  at  the  intrepidity  of  the  sculptor 
who  modeled  and  successfully  cast  the  big 
group  in  bronze  by  his  own  processes. 

Next  followed  the  poetic  Thomas  Craw- 
ford,   and  sturdy  Randolph     Rogers  whose 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


modeling  is  like  wood-carving.  His  are  the 
bronze  doors  of  the  capitol  and  various  pub- 
lic monuments,  likewise  certain  ideal  works, 
as  the  Lost  Pleiad  and  the  once-popu- 
lar Blind  Nydia  with  its  flying  drapery 
in  monotonous  parallel  ribs  and  grooves, 
its  fingers  and  toes  suggestive  of  piano 
keys! 


BLIND    NYDIA    BY    R.    ROGERS. 


Other  men  of  this  time  who  contributed 
their  part  were  Erastus  D.  Palmer,  Henry 
Kirke  Browne,  Larkin  Mead,  Launt  Thomp- 
son, William  H.  Rhinehart,  Martin  Milmore, 
and  several  of  less  renown. 

Good  American  sculpture  begins  with 
Thomas  Ball  (born  in  1819),  who  still  lives 
to  behold  the  progress  of  his  art  in  this 
country  and  to  receive  the  homage  of  scores 


of  younger  colleagues.  Ball's  figures  have 
little  variety  of  surface  treatment,  but  are 
well  constructed  and  always  dignified,  being 
conceived  in  a  large,  monumental  way. 
The  best  known  are  the  equestrian  Washing- 
ton in  Boston,  and  the  Emancipation  Monu- 
ment in  the  city  of  Washington. 

Distinguished  from  most  of  those  who 
precede  by  the  fact  that  his  study  and  work 
have  been  entirely  upon  native  soil,  is  J.  Q. 
A.  Ward,  the  honored  president  of  the  Na- 
tional Sculpture  Society.  Among  the  many 
well-known  achievements  of  this  veteran 
sculptor  are  his  early  Shakespeare  and  In- 
dian Hunter,  of  Central  Park,  New  York, 
the  Pilgrim,  of  later  date,  in  the  same  place, 
General  Washington,  the  admirable  Beecher 
in  Brooklyn,  the  fine  equestrian  General 
Thomas  and  the  Garfield  Monument  in 
Washington,  and  the  crowning  decoration 
of  the  ephemeral  Dewey  Arch  of  1899,  a 
quadriga  of  sea-horses  driven  by  a  winged 
Victory  and  attendants.  Though  Mr. 
Ward's  work  may  lack  at  times  the  charm 
of  surface  manipulation  in  which  his  younger 
colleagues  excel,  it  always  shows  a  quiet 
simplicity,  an  impressiveness  of  mass  which 
is  the  first  element  in  good  monumental 
sculpture.  Over-clever  men  are  liable  at 
times  to  neglect  this,  but  Mr.  Ward  could 
not  neglect  it;  it  is  part  of  his  artistic  per- 
sonality. In  this  he  is  like  the  great  French 
animalist  Fremiet — whatever  he  does  is 
"big"  and  effective  even  at  a  distance  where 
detail  is  completely  obliterated.  Mr. 
Ward's  figures  do  not  sparkle,  and  they 
would  gain,  no  doubt,  in  interest,  if  Mac- 
Monnies  or  St.  Gaudens  could  touch  them 
here  and  there,  but  the  sculptural  concep- 
tion and  the  structural  evolution  require 
naught  at  their  hands.  One  might  search 
long  to  find  a  more  impressive  and  virile 
portrait  statue  than  the  Washington  in  Wall 
Street.  In  the  Pilgrim  the  sculptor  has 
shown  the  same  comprehension.  He  has 
not  trifled  with  his  subject.  One  questions 
if  the  more  vivacious  technique  of  the  Paris 
trained  sculptor  would  make  the  figure  any 
better — the  handling  is  in  such  perfect  ac- 
cord with  the  stern,  inflexible  repression 
which  we  associate  with  this  manner  of 
man. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


A 


325 


MERICAN    SCULPTURE.  —  Con- 
tinued, (n) 

Olin  L.  Warner,  in  spite  of  meager 
opportunities,    produced    good 


sculpture  and  will  always  be  respected  by 
artists.  From  lack  of  other  employment  he 
devoted  much  time  to  medallions,  pro- 
ducing a  series  of  several  hundred  low  re- 


liefs of  great  beauty  and  interest.  Among 
these  are  many  portraits  of  famous  Indians. 
His  busts  are  characterized  by  an  extraor- 
dinary subtlety  of  modeling,  and  in  his 
statue  of  William  Lloyd  Garrison  (Boston) 
he  has  left  us  perhaps  the  finest  seated  fig- 
ure in  the  country.  His  Governor  Bucking- 
ham, of  Connecticut,  is  also  highly  esteemed. 
In  1880  Augustus  St.  Gaudens  (b.  1848),  a 
young  man  of  French  and  Irish  parentage, 
made  himself  known  to  the  American  public 
through  his  statue  of  Admiral  Farragut,  now 
in  Madison  Square,  New  York.  The  sculp- 
tor's thorough  preparation — successively  as 
an  apprentice,  a  cameo  cutter,  then  in  the 
Ecole  des  Beaux  Arts  and  finally  through  a 
sojourn  of  some  years 
in  Italy — united  with 
an  admirable  grasp  of 
his  subject,  resulted  in 
a  figure  which  was  a 
revelation  to  our  peo- 
ple. Mr.  St.  Gau- 
dens' position  as  a 
leader  was  assured  at 
once,  and  our  national 
art  has  been  colored 
from  that  day  by  his 
dominant  influence. 
He  has  produced 
more  good  sculpture 
here  than  any  other 
American  of  the  pres- 
ent or  past.  He  has 
thereby  done  more  to 
raise  the  standard  of 

America's  sculpture  than  has  any  other 
man.  As  conscientious  as  he  is  gifted,  Mr. 
St.  Gaudens  has  never  sent  work  from  his 
studio  until  it  was  as  good  as  he  knew  how 
to  make  it.  St.  Gaudens'  memorials  in  low 
and  in  high  relief  grace  many  eastern 
churches  and  museums.  No  American 
sculptor  has  approached  him  in  the  taste 
and  skill  with  which  he  has  wrought  a  great 
variety  of  these  charming  echoes  of  early 
Florentine  art.  Most  of  our  sculptors  have 
essayed  to  imitate  him,  and  to  the  casual 
observer  he  has  many  rivals,  but  110  trained 
artist  ever  mistakes  the  work  of  St.  Gau- 
dens. There  is  one  certain  rule — if  the 
workmanship  is  found  to  be  in  the  slightest 


326 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


LINCOLN    STATUE,   CHICAGO,   BY    A.    ST.    GAUDENS. 

measure  careless  or  open  to  criticism,  it  is 
not  his.  If  it  bears  the  most  careful  scru- 
tiny and  is  "just  right"  in  drawing-,  in  its 
"planes,"  in  the  beauty  of  its  modeling-,  it 
is  sure  to  be  signed  somewhere 
in  letters  microscopic,  Augustus 
St.  Gaudens.  To  the  professional 
eye,  however,  it  needs  no  signa- 
ture; he  alone  could  have  done  it. 
Without  question  the  Lincoln 
of  Lincoln  Park,  Chicago,  is  the 
greatest  portrait  statue  in  this 
country.  From  conception  to  fin- 
ish it  is  masterly.  It  is  criticised 
only  by  those  who  do  not  know 
it.  All  who  see  it  come  under 
the  spell.  It  is  potent  and  irre- 
sistible in  its  grave  appeal.  For 
appreciative  estimates  of  this  and 
other  works  of  St.  Gaudens,  by 
Mrs.  Van  Rensselaer,  Kenyon 
Cox  and  W.  A.  Coffin,  the  reader 
should  see  the  "Century  Maga- 
zine" of  November,  1887,  and  Jan- 
uary, 1897. 


In  a  cemetery  of  Washington, 
D.  C.,  is  one  of  St.  Gaudens'  most 
beautiful  and  least  known  works. 
Within  an  enclosure  of  evergreens 
sits  a  bronze  figure  whose  deeply 
shadowed  mystic  countenance 
photographs  itself  upon  the  mem- 
ory of  every  visitor.  The  weird 
dreamer,  with  head  half  hidden 
in  drapery  and  listless  hands,  sits 
like  one  of  the  fateful  sisters  of 
old — a  sibyl  peering,  though  with 
closed  eyes,  into  futurity.  She 
alone  could  make  an  artist's  fame. 
But  no  youthful  dreamer  could 
have  created  her;  she  was  born 
of  the  earnest  thoughts  of  a  ma- 
ture life. 

In  some  respects   the    greatest 
and  most   original   of  all  of    St. 
Gaudens'    works    is    the    superb 
Shaw    memorial.       Boston     pos- 
sesses   this    masterpiece    and    is 
justly  proud  of  it.     It  is  a  large 
relief  of  bronze,  framed  in  stone, 
a  composition  of  many  figures  in 
high    relief,    or,    indeed,     in    the 
round,   though  attached    to   a  background. 
Colonel  Shaw  is  represented  starting  for  the 
war  with  his  colored  regiment.     With  head 
square  upon  the  shoulders  and  sad  eyes  un- 


ADAMS  MEMORIAL,  WASHINGTON,   BY  A.    ST.     GAUDENS. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


327 


SHAW    MEMORIAL    KY    A.    ST.    GAUDENS. 
Copyright  1897  by  A.  St.   Gaudens.    From  a  Copley  Print,  copyright  1897,  by  Curtis  &  Cameron. 


flinching,  the  heroic  leader  rides  steadily  to 
his  fate.  His  horse  is  a  splendid  sculptural 
work,  but  ever  dominated  by  the  stern-faced 
rider.  Then  behind  and  across  the  entire 
background  march  with  rhythmic  tread  the 
black  men,  their  muskets  over  shoulders 
which  bend  under  the  burdensome  knapsacks. 
They  are  equipped  for  a  long  journey  from 
which  not  many  will  return.  The  move- 
ment of  this  vast  composition  is  extraordi- 
nary. You  almost  hear  the  roll  of  the  drums 
and  the  shuffle  of  the  heavy  shoes.  It 
makes  the  day  of  that  brave  departure  very 
real  again. 

Mr.  St.  Gaudens'  exhibit  at  the  Exposition 
of  1900  was  composed  of  The  Shaw  relief,  the 
beautiful  Amor  Caritas  of  the  Luxembourg, 
the  Deacon  Chapin,  a  series  of  medallions, 
and  the  sculptor's  latest  work,  a  splendid 
equestrian  Sherman  led  by  a  winged  Victory. 


St.  Gaudens'  favorite  pupil  has  made  a 
record  apart  from  the  real  artistic  excel- 
lence of  his  work.  Frederick  MacMonnies 
(b.  1863)  surpasses  the  Frenchmen  them- 
selves in  cleverness ;  and  in  the  last  ten  years 
has  produced  more  than  any  other  living 
sculptor.  Indeed,  it  is  probable  that  no 
man  has  ever  done  so  much  before  in  the 
same  length  of  time.  Following  the  Nathan 
Hale,  and  Stranahan  (Salon  of  1891)  he  be- 
gan the  decade  with  his  Pan  of  Ronhallion 
and  the  Faun  with  Heron.  These  were  but 
curtain-raisers,  as  it  were,  of  the  drama  of 
feverish  toil  which  the  youth  was  about  to 
undertake.  It  began  in  serious  earnest  with 
the  enormous  Columbian  fountain  whose 
twenty-seven  gigantic  figures  cost  two  years 
of  unremitting  labor  and  all  the  money  that 
the  sculptor  received  for  his  work.  It  was 
an  artistic  success,  one  of  the  greatest  at- 


328 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


tractions  of  the  Exposition,  and  made  the 
young  sculptor  known  from  one  end  of  the 
country  to  the  other. 

Then  followed  the  nimble  Bacchante  with 
Infant  Faun,  a  marvel  of  blithesome  move- 
ment, Sir  Henry  Vane  (Boston),  Venus  and 
Adonis,  a  strange  archaic  Shakespeare  for 
the  Congressional  Library,  bronze  doors  for 
the  same  building,  a  Victory  for  West  Point, 
two  Cupids  on  globes,  the  little  Goose-thief, 
an  enormous  quadriga  and  two  colossal  mili- 
tary groups  for  the  Brooklyn  Soldiers  and 


COLUMBUS    BY    P.    BARTLETT. 

Sailors  Monument,  two  groups  of  gigantic 
horse  tamers  for  Prospect  Park,  Brooklyn, 
and  this  year  an  equestrian  statue  of  Gen- 
eral Slocum.  These  with  a  parallel  list  of 
less  important  works  form  Mr.  MacMonnies' 
record  for  the  last  ten  years,  an  array 
worthy  of  a  long  life  of  strenuous  effort. 
Ten  of  these  pieces  were  shown  at  the  Ex- 
position of  1900,  where  Messrs.  MacMonnies, 
St.  Gaudens  and  French  received  medals  of 
honor.  No  other  country  made  a  showing 


of  such  distinction.  Indisputably  the  sculp- 
ture of  the  United  States  stood  next  to  that 
of  France  in  matter  of  both  dignity  and 
workmanship. 

For  an  able  and  appreciative  article  on 
Mr.  MacMonnies  see  "Scribner's  Magazine" 
of  November,  1895. 

Far  shorter  is  the  list  of  Paul  Bartlett's 
achievements,  but  it  is  one  which  inspires 
respect.  After  the  well-known  Bear-trainer 
of  1890,  he  fashioned  the  strange  Ghost- 
dancer,  which  we  saw  at  the  Columbian  Ex- 
position, a  work  of  astonishing  skill,  though 
hardly  a  thing  of  beauty.  Then  followed 
the  Dying  Lion,  in  which  the  young  artist 
revealed  his  indebtedness  to  M.  Fremiet. 
Mr.  Bartlett's  two  contributions  to  the  Con- 
gressional Library,  his  proud  Columbus  and 
the  somber  Michelangelo,  seem  to  the 
writer  far  superior  to  the  majority  of  their 
companions  in  all  the  qualities  of  distinct- 
ness of  idea,  in  the  carrying  power  of  their 
lines,  and  in  modeling.  This  summer  Mr. 
Bartlett  has  scored  a  new  triumph  in  his 
thoroughly  admirable  equestrian  statue  of 
Lafayette,  presented  to  the  French  govern- 
ment by  this  country.  It  will  occupy  wor- 
thily the  very  center  of  historic  and  aesthetic 
Paris,  the  court  of  the  Tuileries. 


A 


MERICAN 
eluded.  (12) 


SCULPTURE.  —  Con- 


The  two  preceding  sculptors — - 
MacMonnies  and  Bartlett — have 
sojourned  abroad  for  many  years;  George 
Barnard,  on  the  other  hand,  after  his  great, 
success  in  the  Salon  of  the  Champs  de  Mars 
in  1894,  elected  to  return  to  his  native  land. 
In  talent  and  skill  the  French  recognized 
him  as  one  of  our  greatest  sculptors;  but  so 
original — not  to  say  wayward — is  his  work, 
so  purely  sculptural  in  conception,  that  to 
many  it  is  a  sealed  book.  As  an  able  critic 
has  written  of  him:  "He  is  perhaps  just  a 
little  out  of  the  perspective  of  modern  days. 
We  have  too  much  talent,  conventional  and 
tranquil  and  adaptive  in  its  tendencies  to 
calmly  accept  a  man  of  striking  originality 
and  divergence." 

In   the    presence   of   Mr.   Barnard's  Two 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


Natures,    in   the    Metropolitan 
Museum,  New  York,  one  feels 
a  creative   force    that    is   com- 
pelling, irresistible ;  you  look  at 
nothing-    else    until    you    have 
made   the   circuit   of  that    ex- 
traordinary   group.      You    are 
drawn  and  held,  but  not  alto- 
gether  persuaded.       Mr.    Bar- 
nard's  thought  is   too    power- 
ful, his  expression  too  original, 
to   strike  responsive  chords  at 
once.     How  could  they?     What 
is  there  within  us  to  respond  to 
such  notes  as  these?     What   in 
our    daily    humdrum    lives    to 
bring   us   into  tune  with  such 
Titanic  dreams  of  struggle?    A 
mighty  victor,  half  erect,    half 
bending   over  a  prostrate  foe. 
Figures  nude,  much  larger  than 
life ;  superb  bodies  marvelously 
modeled,    or     rather     carved, 
since   the   whole    treatment   is 
consistently  that  of  the  marble. 
It  is  consistent  in  more  ways 
than    one.     It    is    consistently    perplexing 
from   its  very  name   and  intention  all  the 
way  down  to  the  last  touches  on  its  strange- 
ly   wrought    extremities.       "I     Feel    Two 
Natures  Struggling  within   Me"  is   its   full 
title — the  artist's  point  of  departure.     And 
depart  at  once  he  does.     The  two  natures 
he  shows  and  the  struggle,  or  at  least  the 
end  of   a    vigorous    grapple,    which   leaves 
the   triumph   by  no   means  in  doubt.     But 
here  our  sculptor  is  tantalizing;  he  never 
deigns  to  tell  us  which  is  which.     The  in- 
scrutable faces  are  those  of  twin  brothers. 

> 

they  might  have  been  cast  in  the  same  mold. 
Does  Mr.  Barnard  belong  to  the  good  old 
school  of  art  where  right  always  triumphs 
in  the  last  act?  Or  does  he  view  life  with 
the  eye  of  the  hopeless  modern  "veritist," 
calmly  persuaded  that,  "Whatever  is 
is  wrong"?  Probably  he  is  doing  the  most 
modern  thing  of  all,  leaving  us  to  guess  the 
riddle  as  we  will.  And  art  or  no  art,  we 
believe  in  our  heart  of  heart  that  right  will 
conquer  in  the  end.  We  read  this  meaning 
into  the  group  before  us,  and  are  pleased  at 
our  own  clearness  in  having  fathomed  the 


TWO    NATURES    BY    G.     BARNARD. 

artist's  intention  —  without  his  telling  us  a 
thing. 

One  other  important  name  remains  to  be 
added  to  the  group  of  American  Sculptors 
of  the  first  magnitude,  that  of  Daniel  Ches- 
ter French  (b.  1850),  who  is  perhaps  the 
most  representative  American  of  them  all. 
He  was  born  in  New  Hampshire  of  lineage 
long  native ;  his  foreign  study,  though  val- 
uable, was  but  slight  in  duration,  and  his 
life  work  has  been  done  in  this  country. 

Even  the  Minute  Man  of  Concord,  a  boy- 
ish performance,  reveals  a  manly  compre- 
hension and  strikes  the  note  of  succeeding 
maturer  achievements.  A  year  abroad  in 
the  studio  of  Thomas  Ball  widened  the 
young  artist's  range,  and  much  practice  in 
the  sculptural  decorations  of  public  build- 
ings next  gave  helpful  experience.  The 
ideal  portrait  of  John  Harvard  may  be  called 
'the  last  of  Mr.  French's  early  works,  at 
least  from  this  point  we  find  the  suaver 
touch  of  the  ripened  artist.  Mr.  French 
absorbed  some  of  the  best  qualities  of  mod- 
ern French  sculpture  while  executing  his 
General  Cass  in  Paris  in  1888.  This  statue 


332 


SCULPTURE  OF  THE 


r 


DEATH    AND    THE    SCULPTOR.       D.    C.    FRENCH. 
Front  a  Copley  Print,  copyright  i&qj  by  Curtis  and  Cameron. 


is  the  only  respectable  work  in  our  National 
Sculpture  Gallery.  Among  those  hard, 
conventional  figures  it  stands  alone.  It  has 
an  individuality,  an  equipoise  and  a  tech- 
nical perfection  undreamed  of  by  the  earlier 
generations  of  American  sculptors.  Com- 
paring it  with  its  fellows,  one  understands 
why  all  turn  now  to  Paris  instead  of  to 
Rome  or  Florence. 

Next  came  the  Gallaudet  monument  of 
Washington,  D.  C.,  where  the  teacher  of 
the  deaf  and  dumb  is  shown  seated  with  a 
little  girl  of  eight  or  ten  beside  him.  The 
treatment  of  the  subject  is  sympathetic 
without  becoming  sentimental.  The  ges- 
ture of  the  child,  who  forms  a  letter  of  the 
alphabet  with  her  little  hand,  is  full  of  sig- 


nificance. Finer  than  this,  however,  finer 
than  the  excellent  modeling  of  the  figures, 
is  the  tender  interest  of  the  teacher  and  the 
gratitude  of  the  pupil.  It  is  the  essence 
which  permeates  the  whole  conception  and 
makes  of  it  a  work  of  art. 

Mr.  French's  greatest  thought  is  embod- 
ied in  the  magnificent  relief  of  Death  and 
the  Sculptor.  Here  is  no  space  to  do  it  jus- 
tice. Let  me  say  only  that  nothing  finer 
has  been  done  in  this  country,  nor  is  likely 
to  be  for  many  a  year.  Beside  this  noble 
memorial  to  the  sculptor  Milmore,  most  of 
our  work  sinks  into  insignificance.  Pains- 
taking realism,  "clever"  modeling,  even 
tours  de  force  of  dexterity  seem  but  stale, 
dry  and  unprofitable  beside  the  calm  dignity 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 


333 


of  this  majestic,  mysterious  presence.  It  is 
a  great  thought  simply,  adequately  ex- 
pressed. 

Mr.  French's  contributions  to  the  Colum- 
bian Exposition  were  of  the  first  impor- 
tance. His  stately  "Republic"  was  the  im- 
pressive, dominating  genius  of  the  Court  of 
Honor;  at  the  same  time  a  personality 
and  a  monument  harmonizing  with  its 
architectural  surroundings.  Compare  it 
with  Schwanthaler's  Bavaria  or  Bartholdi's 
America  and  its  masterly  reserve  will  be 
appreciated.  The  O'Reilly  Memorial  of 
Boston  is  more  ingenious  but  less  inspired 
than  the  "Death  and  the  Sculptor."  Its 
dignity  and  its  beauty  of  modeling  are 
worthy,  however,  of  its  author  and  of  its 
subject. 

This  summer  has  seen  the  unveiling  of 
Mr.  French's  much  admired  Washington,  in 
Paris,  a  work  of  great  distinction.  In  this, 
as  well  as  in  all  of  his  equestrian  subjects, 
Mr.  E.  C.  Potter,  his  former  pupil,  has  ably 
collaborated  with  him.  These  are  but  a 
small  part  of  the  worthy  works  which  Mr. 
French  has  produced.  His  hand  and  brain 
are  indefatigable,  yet  he  is  overwhelmed 
with  orders.  Each  one  completed  adds  to 
the  country's  sum  total  of  artistic  wealth. 


Space  will  not  permit  of  more  than  men- 
tion of  Herbert  Adams'  exquisite  busts,  of 
Edwin  Elwell's  ideal  subjects,  of  John 
Boyle's  robust  groups,  and  of  the  poetic  art 
of  William  Ordway  Partridge. 

In  addition  to  the  foregoing  array  of 
talent,  to  the  admirable  decorative  sculp- 
tors led  by  Philip  Martiny  and  Karl  Bit- 
ter, and  to  the  sculptors  of  animals,  Pot- 
ter, Proctor  and  the  self-trained  Edward 
Kemeys,  there  remains  a  group  of  younger 
men  whose  careers  may  be  safely  predicted 
from  the  works  already  achieved.  Among 
those  who  have  received  gratifying,  well- 
merited  honors  are  Charles  Qrafly  of  Phila- 
delphia, Cyrus  E.  Dallin  and  Richard  E. 
Brooks  of  Boston,  H.  H.  MacNeil  of  Chi- 
cago, and  Clement  J.  Barnhorn  of  Cincin- 
nati. And  each  of  these  in  turn  has  a  score 
of  eager  pupils  There  is  no  danger  that 
sculpture  will  become  extinct  in  this  coun- 
try during  the  twentieth  century.  Even 
the  conservative  can  read  in  the  omens 
something  new  and  strong  and  fine.  Un- 
hampered by  tradition,  yet  the  heirs  of  all 
accomplished  in  the  past,  quick  to  learn, 
virile  and  imaginative,  our  sculptors  will 
certainly  have  something  new  to  say  to  the 
world  in  the  story  of  art. 


THE  CRUCIFIXION    BY    FRA  ANGELICO.       (SEE  PAGE    343). 


Painting:   Greek,  Roman,  Medieval  and  the 
Early  Renaissance  in  Italy. 


BY 


OLAF  M.   BRAUNER. 


ASSISTANT    PROFESSOR    OF    DRAWING    AND    MODELING,    CORNELL    UN1VKRSITY. 


G 


REEK    AND    ROMAN    PAINT- 
ING.(i3) 


Greek  Art,  so  rich  in  examples 
of  sculpture,  is  not  represented 
by  one  example  from  the  work  of  its  famous 
masters  in  painting.  Several  causes  com- 
bined to  produce  this  result,  among  others 
the  greater  perishability  and  transporta- 
bility of  painting,  which  made  it  more  easily 
the  prey  of  the  Roman  conquerors. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  judge  of  paint- 
ing by  description,  but  that  is  precisely 
what  we  have  to  do  in  Greek  art.  Aris- 


totle, Plutarch,  Pliny,  Quintilian,  Lucian 
and  Cicero  are  the  authorities  upon  which 
our  knowledge  of  Greek  painting  is  based, 
though  some  idea  can  be  gained  from  the 
Greek  vases  (see  the  cut,  p.  97)  and  the  few 
slabs  and  frescoes  from  the  Graeco-Roman 
period  found  on  Roman  soil. 

The  Greeks  were  the  first  people  to  make 
painting  a  really  free  and  independent  art, 
and  the  first  who  succeeded  in  picturing 
realities;  for  in  Egyptian  and  Assyrian  art 
painting  had  been  simply  an  adjunct  to 
architecture. 

The  development  of  painting  was   very 


334 


PAINTING:  GREEK. 


335 


much  slower  than  that  of  sculpture.  The 
Greeks  were  a  people  passionately  fond  of 
form.  The  charm  of  fine  proportions,  the 
beauty  of  exquisite  pure  line  appealed  to 
them  with  more  force  than  did  beauty  of 
color,  space  and  envelope.  The  earliest 
work  seems  to  have  been  pottery  and  tomb 
decoration.  Later,  painting  was  done  on 
stone  and  terra  cotta  slabs.  Wall  paintings 
were  done  in  distemper.  Encaustic  paint- 
ing carne  into  use  later  than  distemper, 
which  is  the  earliest  medium  known  to  his- 
tory. Down  to  500  B.  C.,  Greek  painting 
seems  to  have  been  little  more  than  outline 
filled  in  with  flat  monochromatic  tints. 
About  this  date  the  names  of  the  more  im- 
portant artists  begin  to  be  mentioned. 

History  is  very  uncertain  about  the  paint- 
ers and  schools  of  the  earlier  Greek  paint- 
ing; but  during  the  period  from  the  Persian 
to  the  Peloponnesian  wars  the  principal  art 
activity  centered  at  Athens,  then  supreme 
in  Greece,  and  the  painters  of  that  time  are 
classed  under  the  Older  Attic  School. 

Polygnotus  of  Thasos  (fl.  475-455  B.  C.) 
is  the  first  immortal  name  among  this  group 
of  men.  His  greatest  work  was  a  series  of 
paintings  for  the  assembly  room  of  the 
Knidians  at  Delphi.  They  were  not,  how- 
ever, complete  pictorial  renderings.  In 
composition  they  seem  to  have  been  made 
up  of  isolated  groups  tied  together  in  no 
particular  way  and  treated  more  as  a  bas- 
relief  than  a  painting.  The  figures  were 
drawn  in  profile  against  a  conventional 
background,  while  the  charm  of  color  as 
affected  by  light  and  shade  and  atmosphere 
was  as  yet  undreamed  of.  Landscape, 
buildings,  etc.,  were  represented  by  sym- 
bols rather  than  by  delineation  of  actualities. 
But  the  activity  of  Polygnotus  was  so  nearly 
contemporaneous  with  that  of  Phidias  that 
his  figures  must  have  had  at  least  some  of  the 
majestic  dignity,  repose  and  breadth  which 
distinguishes  the  sculpture  of  the  time. 

Polygnotus  was  the  exponent  of  one  tend- 
ency in  the  earlier  school.  With  Agathar- 
chos  of  Samos  (fl.  end  of  fifth  cen.  B.  C.) 
we  find  a  decidedly  opposite  tendency, 
which  was  finally  to  completely  revolutionize 
Greek  painting.  He  was  a  scene  painter, 
and  by  the  necessities  of  his  profession  was 


led  to  study  more  carefully  the  appearances 
of  nature  so  as  to  produce  the  effect  of  illu- 
sion. This  led  to  the  realism  of  later  Greek 
art  and  gave  rise  to  landscape  painting.  He 
seems  to  have  understood  the  first  principles 
of  perspective,  and  changed  the  art  of  paint- 
ing from  the  drawing  of  outline  and  flat 
color  to  the  rendering  of  -nature  in  broad 
masses  with  its  light  and  shade. 

Apollodorus  of  Athens  (fl.  end  of  fifth  cen. 
B.  C.)  combined  the  ideal  dignity  and 
beauty  of  Polygnotus'  line  with  the  effect  of 
realism  gained  by  Agatharchos.  He  de- 
veloped light  and  shade  farther  than  before, 
and  on  that  account  received  the  name  of 
Skiagraphos  (shadow-painter). 

With  the  decline  of  the  political  suprem- 
acy of  Athens,  Greek  painting  branched  in- 
to several  schools,  chief  among  these  until 
the  time  of  Alexander  the  Great  being  :  (i) 
The  Ionian;  (2)  the  Sikyonian;  (3)  the  The- 
ban-Attic. 

The  painters  of  the  Ionian  School  carried 
the  realistic  effects  of  Apollodorus  still  far- 
ther. Zeuxis  of  Herakleia  (born  about  450 
B.  C.)  gained  his  style  under  Apollodorus  at 
Athens,  but  the  scene  of  his  greatest  activ- 
ity was  Ephesus.  He  seems  to  have  been 
especially  noted  for  his  peculiar  choice  of 
subjects  and  his  power  to  create  the  effect 
of  illusion.  That  the  painters  of  his  day 
carried  realism  to  a  considerable  extent  we 
may  know  by  the  story  of  the  birds  who 
came  to  peck  at  a  bunch  of  grapes  painted 
by  Zeuxis.  This  implies  a  knowledge  of 
light  and  shade,  color  and  modeling;  and 
the  supposition  is  confirmed  by  the  story  of 
Parrhasios  of  Ephesus  (about  400  B.  C.), 
who  seems  to  have  outdone  Zeuxis  in  real- 
ism, for  whereas  Zeuxis  deceived  only  the 
birds,  Parrhasios  deceived  Zeuxis  himself  by 
a  realistic  painting  of  a  curtain.  If  the 
story  is  true,  it  shows  the  smallness  of  aim 
at  the  time.  The  ancient  writers,  however, 
may  have  known  no  more  about  painting 
than  do  so  many  people  of  to-day,  and  may 
have  looked  only  for  the  claptrap  of  illusion 
and  minute  finish,  and  missed  the  grander 
qualities  of  their  painters, 

Timanthes  of  Kythnos  seems  to  have  been 
the  equal  of  Zeuxis  and  Parrhasios  in  exe- 
cution, and  to  have  surpassed  them  both  in 


336 


PAINTING: 


conception.  About  his  famous  work,  The 
Sacrifice  of  Iphigenia,  more  has  been  writ- 
ten than  about  any  other  picture  of  antiq- 
uity. There  is  a  supposed  copy  of  this 
picture  among  the  Pompeiian  decorations. 

The  Sikyonian  School  sprang  up  after  the 
Peloponnesian  wars  with 

Eupompos  as  its  founder.  His  advice  to 
Lysippus,  the  sculptor,  gives  the  keynote  of 
the  school.  In  reply  to  a  question  of  Lysip- 
pus as  to  which  of  his  predecessors  he  should 
imitate,  he  said,  "Let  nature  be  your  model, 
not  an  artist."  His  pupil, 

Pamphilos  brought  the  Sikyonian  school 
to  its  maturity.  He  seems  to  have  been  a 
Grecian  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  skilled  in  all 
branches  of  science.  He  taught  academic 
methods  of  composition  and  drawing,  and 
his  school  became  famous  all  over  Greece, 
the  mere  reputation  of  having  studied  there 
being  sought  after.  His  pupil, 

Pausias  carried  execution  still  farther 
forward.  Pliny  says  he  painted  an  ox  with 
such  just  values  that  its  body  actually 
seemed  to  recede  into  the  picture.  The 
importance  of  the  Sikyonian  school  seems 
to  have  ceased  with  the  immediate  succes- 
sors of  Pausias. 

TheTheban-Attic  School  was  distinguished 
for  greater  ease  and  versatility  instead  of 
the  academic  exactness  of  the  Sikyonian. 

Nikomachus  (fl.  about  360  B.  C.)  was  its 
head.  He  was  noted  for  the  rapidity  and 
boldness  of  his  execution ; 

Aristides,  his  brother,  for  the  intense  ex- 
pression he  imparted  to  his  figures. 

Euphranor  (fl.  360  B.  C.)  was  equally 
famous  as  sculptor  and  painter.  With 
academic  drawing  and  principles  he  seemed 
to  combine  the  power  of  expressing  intense 
emotion.  He  was  especially  renowned  for 
his  pictures  of  the  Olympian  Gods  at  Athens. 

Nikias  (fl.  340-300  B.  C.)  was  a  contem- 
porary of  the  great  sculptor  Praxiteles,  and 
in  his  younger  days  colored  some  of  the 
latter's  statues.  Nikias  opposed  the  grow- 
ing tendency  of  the  time  to  paint  trivial  sub- 
jects, holding  that  an  artist  should  always 
choose  a  worthy  theme.  He  was  especially 
strong  in  rendering  the  female  form. 
Nikias  and  his  contemporaries  before  men- 
tioned belonged  in  spirit  to  the  fourth  cen- 


tury, though  they  lived  into  the  Hellenistic 
period ;  but  contemporary  with  them  and 
succeeding  them  were  men  who  belonged 
more  specifically  to  that  period.  At  their 
head  stood 

Apelles  of  Kos,  the  most  famous  of  the 
Grecian  painters.  He  has  been  called  the 
Raphael  of  antiquity.  His  severe  academic 
training  in  the  Sikyonian  school,  coupled 
with  his  native  Ionic  feeling,  must  have 
produced  a  powerful  kind  of  painting.  He 
is  said  to  have  been  superior  to  all  others  in 
refinement  of  light  and  shade  and  modeling, 
and  he  obtained  a  beautiful  rich  glow  of 
color  by  the  use  of  glazing  over  his  tempera. 
Seventeen  hundred  years  after  him  Bot- 
ticelli tried  to  reproduce  his  celebrated 
Calumny.  His  greatest  work  was  the 
Aphrodite  Rising  from  the  Sea,  which 
ranked  with  the  Knidian  Aphrodite  of 
Praxiteles.  Ovid  says:  "But  for  Apelles' 
picture  Aphrodite  would  have  remained 
concealed  forever  beneath  her  native  wat- 
ers."  Apelles  was  also  a  great  portrait 
painter. 

Protogenes  seems  to  have  been  noted 
mostly  for  his  remarkably  minute  finish 
rather  than  for  his  artistic  merit.  Such  was 
the  taste  of  the  day.  After  Alexander  the 
Great  the  tide  of  decline  set  in  more  and 
more  strongly.  Artists  were  either  theatri- 
cal and  strained,  or  commonplace  and 
trivial ;  their  only  aim  seeming  to  be  decep- 
tive illusion. 

Theon  of  Samos  illustrates  this  peculiar 
spirit  of  the  age  in  his  reported  painting  of 
a  warrior  shown  in  the  moment  of  attack. 
On  drawing  the  curtain  before  the  picture 
he  would  sound  a  blast  on  a  trumpet,  and 
the  warrior  was  painted  with  such  action 
that  he  seemed  to  plunge  forward  at  the 
spectators.  With  some  painters  art  had 
descended  to  mere  trickery;  with  others  it 
found  its  subjects  in  huckster  stalls,  cobbler 
shops,  etc.,  painted  in  a  finical  and  literal- 
istic  way.  Landscape  painting,  but  only 
of  a  decorative  kind,  came  in  with  this  pe- 
riod. The  Greek  creative  force  was  spent. 
Under  the  dominance  of  Rome,  painters  set 
up  their  studios  in  the  imperial  city  to  pan- 
der to  the  taste  of  their  political  masters. 

Roman  Painting — The  Romans  in  general 


GREEK  AND  ROMAN. 


337 


looked  upon  art  from  a  standpoint  entirely 
different  from  that  of  the  Greeks.  They  did 
not  patronize  art  because  of  any  inborn  crav- 
ing, but  simply  because  they  were  luxurious 
and  felt  art  to  be  a  luxury.  It  tickled  their 
vanity  to  possess  works  of  art.  Later,  it 
gained  for  some  an  additional  value  by 
imparting  an  air  of  culture. 

The  Etruscans  had  practiced  a  native  art 
in  Italy  long  before  the  Romans  gained  the 
ascendency  there,  but  it  was  clumsily  real- 
istic and  crude.  A  decided  Greek  influence 
set  in,  however,  in  the  third  century  B.  C., 
and  brought  Etruscan  art  to  its  climax.  Na- 
tive realism  is  there  seen  side  by  side  with 
Hellenic  idealism. 

Roman  art  was  simply  a  direct  outgrowth 
or  continuance  of  decadent  Greek  art.  In 
painting  as  in  sculpture,  however,  the  Ro- 
mans appear  to  have  been  strong  in  por- 
traiture. Painting  seems  first  to  have  been 
done  on  panels  alone,  but  in  the  beginning 
of  the  Empire  mural  decoration  came  into 
favor.  Single  figures  or  groups  were  painted 
on  the  walls  and  then  surrounded  by  geo- 
metric, floral  or  architectural  borders.  The 
excavations  at  Pompeii  have  thrown  valua- 
ble light  on  this  phase  of  art. 

These  decorative  wall  paintings  are  re- 
markable for  the  light  fantastic  architec- 
tural designs  used  as  a  decorative  motive,  the 
whole  rather  frivolous  and  impossible.  (See 
the  cut,  p.  135.)  The  coloring  is  very  often 
rich  and  agreeable,  but  also  at  times  simply 
garish.  Single  figures  were  often  painted 
on  panels  of  black  or  red,  forming  part  of 
the  decoration.  They  are  usually  graceful 
and  good  in  line;  and  animals  are  sometimes 
done  with  surprisingly  good  action,  although 
colored  in  an  arbitrary  way.  Sometimes, 
however,  the  figures  are  even  crude  and 
ill-drawn,  and  draperies  are  represented 
without  any  idea  of  folds.  When  one  con- 
siders, however,  that  these  decorations  were 
done  by  mere  craftsmen  to  whom  decora- 
tion was  a  trade,  not  an  art,  one  can  gain 
some  idea  of  the  excellence  of  ancient 
painting  proper. 

Very  little  is  known  about  Roman  paint- 
ers. 

Fabius  Pictor  (about  300  B.  C.)  is  the  first 
celebrated  name.  He  is  known  to  have 


decorated  the  temple  of  Salus  with  large 
figure  paintings. 

Ludius  was  a  favorite  decorator  at  the 
time  of  Augustus.  He  is  perhaps  the  only 
celebrated  ancient  painter  of  whose  work 
there  is  an  existing  example.  This  is  the 
famous  wall-painting  of  Prima  Porta  in 
Rome,  representing  the  entire  plan  of  a 
garden  on  the  four  walls  of  a  room. 

Roman  portraiture  had  a  note  of  the  mod- 
ern spirit  in  it.  Whereas  Greek  portraiture 
was  an  ideal  representation  of  a  man,  in 
Roman  art  we  find  him  as  he  was.  Among 
the  portrait  painters  of  the  last  century  of 
the  Republic  we  find  Sopolis,  Dionysius 
and  Antiochus  Qabinius.  Some  very  inter- 
esting portraits  were  found  in  the  Fayoum, 
Egypt,  and  are  fine  examples  of  later  an- 
cient work. 


1ARLY  CHRISTIAN  AND  GOTH- 
,  1C  PAINTING.  (14) 


-^  Early  Christian  art  does  not  differ 
from  the  antique  in  any  respect 
save  that  its  painters  were  usually  not  so 
proficient  as  the  pagan.  While  the  fear  of 
image  worship  led  the  Christians  to  avoid 
sculpture,  they  did  not  feel  that  danger  in 
painting;  and  so  painting  became  the  chief 
means  of  artistic  expression  for  the  Chris- 
tian world. 

The  domain  of  early  Christian  art  ex- 
tended over  the  whole  Roman  Empire 
wherever  Christian  communities  arose;  and 
as  their  art  was  derived  directly  from  the 
antique,  then  at  a  low  ebb,  we  find  a  gen- 
eral decadence  all  over  Europe  until  the  re- 
vival of  the  thirteenth  century. 

The  earliest  paintings  of  Christian  art 
were  executed  in  the  Catacombs.  In  fact, 
Christian  art  was  born  there.  The  earliest 
works  are  simply  decorative,  and  pagan  mo- 
tives are  freely  used.  These  designs  were 
of  a  strictly  symmetrical  and  architectural 
character,  and  the  coloring  was  usually  a 
scheme  of  bluish  green  and  reddish  brown. 
But  the  Christians  soon  felt  a  need  for  some- 
thing to  set  forth  the  spiritual  teachings  of 
their  creed,  and  hence  symbolism  begins  to 
appear.  Thus  begins  the  twofold  purpose 


338 


PAINTING: 


of  Christian  art,  decoration  and  edification. 
There  were  at  first  only  signs,  such  as  the 
Christ's  monogram;  then  later,  symbols, 
which  properly  come  under  the  head  of 
painting.  A  shepherd  and  his  sheep  be- 
came the  symbol  of  Christ  and  his  flock;  the 
ship,  of  the  church,  etc.  Other  symbols 
were  borrowed  from  pagan  mythology. 
Thus  Orpheus  charming  the  beasts  with  his 


only  as  a  temporary  check  to  their  deca- 
dence. Christian  art  now  extended  itself 
into  book-illumination,  mosaics  and  mural 
decorations  in  general. 

Classic  form  maintained  itr  hold  down  to 
the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries  A.  D.,  as  the 
mosaics  in  the  Baptistery  of  Ravenna  show. 
There  is  still  some  life  in  the  action,  propor- 
tions are  fairly  good,  and  drawing  and  the  gen- 


MOSA1C    IN    ST.     CECILIA  S    CHURCH.     ROME. 


lyre  became  the  symbol  of  the  power  of 
Christianity  over  the  heathen. 

There  was  at  first  a  distinct  aversion  to 
the  actual  representation  of  Christ's  figure; 
but  when  his  likeness  appears  it  is  that  of  a 
Greek  youth  in  a  Phrygian  cap,  and  is  bor- 
rowed directly  from  classic  art. 

With  Constantine  Christianity  was  organ- 
ized as  the  state  religion,  and  Christian  art 
was  then  made  free  to  leave  the  Catacombs; 
but  this  encouragement  of  the  arts  served 


eral  effect  much  better  than  in  productions 
which  came  later.  In  the  age  of  Justinian 
(A.  D.  527-565)  art  became  more  and  more 
fettered  through  church  traditions  and 
edicts.  After  the  iconoclastic  strife  medieval 
art  may  be  said  to  be  fully  established. 

Byzantine  Art,  which  was  distinctly  differ- 
ent from  Italian  art,  now  began  to  extend 
its  sway.  Its  nearness  to  Oriental  influences 
could  not  but  result  in  a  transformation  of 
its  spirit.  Flat  and  badly  drawn  figures 


MEDIEVAL. 


339 


and  draperies  are  shown  in  works  where 
richness  and  magnificence  of  materials  seem 
the  prime  motive.  An  overloading-  of  gold 
is  also  a  characteristic  feature.  An  artist 
might  not  paint  as  he  felt,  but  must  adhere 
to  the  type  fixed  by  the  church.  The 
Byzantines  still  retained  a  degree  of  tech- 
nical excellence ;  but  in  Italy  that  also  was 
lost,  and  crude  workmanship  became  cou- 
pled with  bad  drawing  and  coloring. 
Prudery  forbade  the  rendering  of  the  nude. 
Painters  could  not  even  select  from  the 
antique.  In  the  church  of  St.  Cecilia  in 
Rome  a  mosaic  of  the  ninth  century  shows 
meaningless  folds  of  drapery  and  a  pitiful 
lack  of  form  in  the  figure.  The  figures  are 
hung  in  mid  air,  the  feet  hanging  help- 
lessly down  as  though  out  of  joint.  Art 
sank  lower  and  lower  in  Italy  through  the 
succeeding  "dark  ages." 

North  of  the  Alps  the  contest  of  barbaric 
and  classic  elements  gave  form  to  an  art 
which,  though  distinctly  founded  on  antique 
precedent,  still  had  native  characteristics 
of  its  own.  Nothing  remains  of  this  art, 
however,  but  illuminated  manuscripts. 
Under  Charlemagne  the  Germanic  Empire 
saw  a  decided  encouragement  and  better- 
ment of  art,  while  the  art  of  Italy  still  shows 
a  progressive  degeneracy. 

The  Romanesque  movement  came  into 
being  in  the  tenth  century,  and  lasted  until 
the  fifteenth.  The  architecture  of  this 
period  was  fully  developed,  whereas  paint- 
ing and  sculpture  remained  very  primitive. 
Still  the  art  of  the  west  during  the  Ro- 
manesque period  was  struggling  towards 
freedom,  while  Byzantine  art  with  its  more 
elegant  technique  stood  still. 

The  Gothic  Period. — In  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury medieval  art  saw  a  decided  transforma- 
tion. The  Romanesque  architecture  was 
superseded  and  Gothic  was  carried  to  its 
greatest  perfection  in  France,  whence  the 
new  movement  extended  its  influence  over 
Europe.  With  the  growth  and  ascendency 
of  the  cities,  so  characteristic  of  the  period, 
art  passed  from  the  hands  of  the  priests  into 
that  of  the  trade  corporations,  and  came  to 
have  its  roots  in  the  life  of  the  cities.  The 
masters  of  this  new  age  were  tied  no  longer 
by  ecclesiasticism ;  individuality  was  allowed, 


although  individuality  of  conception  in  the 
full  modern  sense  was  not  known.  Of 
course  art  was  still  the  handmaiden  of  reli- 
gion, but  the  old  morose,  ghastly  art  gave 
place  to  a  healthier  one. 

The  expression  of  sentiment  and  religious 
fervor  seems  the  keynote  of  the  whole 
Gothic  period.  The  stiffness  and  ungain- 
liness  of  the  Byzantine  pattern  disappears, 
and  in  France  and  the  countries  influenced 
by  her  art  there  is  a  fondness  for  flowing 
lines  and  almost  exaggerated  movement. 
Until  A.  D.  1350  Spain,  England,  the 
Netherlands,  and  Germany  came  under  this 
influence,  although  Germany  showed  less 
refinement. 

Wall  painting  in  the  above-mentioned 
countries  was  not  favored  by  this  new 
architecture,  for  the  wall  space  was  taken 
up  by  the  salient  structural  members.  In 
Germany  we  find  more  remains  of  wall 
paintings  than  in  any  other  country  north 
of  the  Alps;  but  they  are  crude  and  some- 
what affected,  and  not  of  much  importance. 
In  Italy  other  conditions  prevailed,  as  we 
shall  see  below.  Glass  painting,  however, 
bloomed  into  full  glory.  In  the  North  the 
great  windows  were  filled  with  designs  in  a 
wonderfully  harmonious  way.  They  were 
kept  flat  in  an  entirely  architectural  man- 
ner, and  for  that  reason  they  were  much 
better  than  the  windows  of  the  Renaissance 
period,  when  the  pictorial  element  was 
allowed  to  detract  from  the  distinctive 
architectural  purpose.  Painting  on  wooden 
panels  was  also  carried  steadily  forward  in 
this  period.  The  painted  altar-piece  came 
in  about  A.  D.  1350.  Panel  pictures  now 
became  more  numerous,  and  local  schools 
can  be  distinguished  and  their  character 
determined. 

The  French  love  of  sentiment,  almost 
exaggerated,  the  long  flowing  drapery  and 
the  slender,  willowy,  almost  too  long  figure 
showed  themselves  strongly  all  over  Ger- 
many with  the  exception  of  the  provinces  in 
the  East.  Here  the 

School  of  Prague  was  the  exponent  of  a 
freer  although  ruder  art.  It  was  remarka- 
ble for  its  austerity  and  solemnity,  charac- 
teristics which  seem  to  disappear  elsewhere 
in  the  fourteenth  century.  Meister  Dietrich, 


340 


PAINTING: 


MADONNA    WITH    CHILD    liY    G.     CIMABUE. 


to  whom  are  ascribed  the  pictures  of  the 
Royal  Chapel  of  the  castle  of  Karlstein,  was 
the  first  master  of  this  school.  Here  senti- 
ment was  rather  lost  in  an  attempt  at  real- 
ism, and  the  figures  were  bony,  heavy  and 
awkward. 

The  School  of  Cologne  was  entirely  im- 
bued with  the  characteristics  of  the  later 
French  Gothic.  Here  the  religious  fervor 
the  exquisite  purity  and  serenity,  the  wist- 
ful yearning  of  that  art  reach  their  fullest 
expression.  One  of  the  best  pictures  of  the 
school  is  the  Madonna  with  the  Bean-flower. 
Here  the  gesture  of  the  child  as  it  reaches 
its  hand  up  to  the  mother's  face  is  full  of 
feeling,  though  the  head  is  rather  affectedly 
posed  on  the  shoulders;  but  the  Madonna's 
face  is  full  of  charm,  sweet,  pure  and  ten- 
der. The  most  celebrated  painter  of  this 


school  was  Meister  Wil- 
helm. 

The  early  School  of  Nu- 
remberg had  the  tenderness 
and  sweetness  of  the  Cologne 
School  with  the  realism  of 
the  School  of  Prague.  There 
is  no  known  painter  of  this 
school,  but  its  chief  work  is 
the  Imhof  altar-piece. 

Of  Spanish  painting  little 
or  nothing  is  known  at  this 
period,  and  Flemish  art  was 
closely  allied  to  the  French. 
In  the  middle  of  the  four- 
teenth century  French  paint- 
ing changed  from  flat  rep- 
resentation to  a  distinctly 
pictorial  rendering,  which 
led  directly  to  the  Flemish 
realism  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury. 


I 


TALI  AN  PAINTING 
IN  THE  GOTHIC  PE- 
RIOD.(is) 


The  thirteenth  century 
saw  a  remarkable  change  in 
Italy.  This  was  the  age  of 
Dante,  Petrarch  and  Boccac- 
cio, when  science  and  poetry 
were  cultivated  and  religion  took  on  a  higher 
form.  Architecture,  sculpture  and  painting 
could  not  help  being  infused  with  the  same 
new  life.  In  spite  of  internal  turmoils  and 
brawls,  commerce  flourished  in  the  independ- 
ent cities,  and  wealth  came  with  it.  Condi- 
tions were  favorable  for  progress  in  all  things. 
Italian  painting,  which  had  lagged  behind 
until  the  Gothic  period,  now  suddenly  took 
the  lead.  The  Italians  took  the  Gothic  archi- 
tecture and  applied  it  to  already  existing  con- 
ditions. Under  Italy's  searching  light  the 
large  windows  were  out  of  place,  and  in 
their  stead  we  find  large  wall-spaces  to  be 
decorated.  This  opportunity  for  decoration 
powerfully  stimulated  the  art  of  painting. 

Italian  painting  developed  faster  than  the 
rest  of  European  art  and  on  lines  peculiar 
to  itself.  There  seems  to  be  a  classic 


MEDIEVAL. 


34i 


dignity  and  restraint,  a  severer  line  and  form, 
rather  than  the  more  sentimental  art  of 
France  and  of  most  of  Germany  with  its  ex- 
aggerated flow  of  line  and  pose.  The  mys- 
tical element  of  the  North,  moreover,  is  ab- 
sent from  Italian  painting. 

From  A.  D.  1250  to  the  beginning  of  the 
sixteenth  century  Tuscany  took  the  lead  in 
the  art  of  Italy.  It  was  in  her  free  cities  that 
the  most  important  movements  of  this  period 
originated,  Florence  ranking  first,  Sienna 
next. 

The  Florentine  School — In  Florence  arose 
the  man  who  has  been  called  the  father  of 
modern  painting.  This  was  Giovanni  Cima- 
bue  (1240-1300).  He  was  only 
one  of  several,  but  seems  to 
have  had  more  originality  and 
ability  than  his  contemporaries. 
To  a  great  extent  he  departed 
from  the  Byzantine  traditions  of 
his  time.  His  frescoes  at  Assisi 
show  that  he  imparted  more  of 
life  to  his  figures  and  that  his 
composition  was  freer.  These 
frescoes  are  in  a  very  bad  state 
of  preservation,  however,  and 
we  have  to  form  an  opinion  of 
his  work  from  his  famous  Ma- 
donna painted  for  the  church  of 
S.  Maria  Novella  in  Florence. 
This  picture  was  carried  in  a 
procession  from  the  master's 
workshop  to  its  destination  by 
the  rejoicing  Florentines.  Here 
we  find  that  the  hard,  staring, 
expressionless  Byzantine  face  has  disap- 
peared. The  drawing  is  still  primitive,  but 
there  is  more  life  and  flow  in  the  line,  the 
drapery  is  no  longer  hard  and  angular,  and 
the  face  is  turned  to  one  side,  whereas  the 
Byzantine  painters  invariably  painted  the 
full  face.  The  child  is  too  much  like  an  old 
man  in  expression ;  but  the  Madonna's  face 
is  pervaded  with  an  expression  of  thought 
and  wistf  ulness,  and  over  the  whole  broods  a 
sentiment  which  is  many  times  sadly  want- 
ing in  later  art  with  its  perfect  execution. 
Cimabue  retains  the  Byzantine  gold  back- 
ground, and  love  of  detail.  In  his  pupil, 

Giotto  (1266?- 1 336)  we  find  the  greatest 
master  of  the  Gothic  period,  an  extraordi- 


nary genius  who  lacked  only  in  technique.  It 
has  been,  said  of  him  that  "his  merit  lies  in 
an  entirely  new  conception  of  character  and 
facts."  He  changed  from  the  dingy,  dark 
color  scheme  of  the  Italo-Byzantine  man- 
ner into  a  purer  and  livelier  key.  Instead 
of  the  cut-up  and  finical  compositions  of  the 
Byzantine,  Giotto  painted  in  broad  and  dig- 
nified masses,  with  more  variety  in  his  fig- 
ures and  real  expression  in  the  faces.  His 
drawing  was  faulty  at  times;  he  could  not 
draw  feet  at  all,  and  was  deficient  in  the 
feeling  for  line ;  but  he  was  fine  in  the  ar- 
rangement of  groups,  and  his  disposition 
of  masses  was  superb.  In  his  noble  color- 


DESCENT    OF   THE   HOLY    GHOST.       GIOTTO. 

ing  he  was  more  like  Titian  than  any  other 
Florentine.  There  were  many  technical 
shortcomings:  he  knew  no  perspective; 
architecture,  trees  and  rocks  were  simply 
symbolized ;  but  it  is  in  the  feeling  of  dig- 
nity and  artistic  restraint,  in  the  power  to 
express  so  much  with  so  little,  in  the  ability 
to  grasp  a  complex  situation  and  present  it 
simply,  in  his  mastery  over  human  expres- 
sion, so  that  in  spite  of  certain  crudities  of 
technique  we  feel  the  inward  spirit  and 
thought,  that  Giotto's  greatest  power  lies. 
In  the  Arena  Chapel  at  Padua,  for  instance, 
where  his  greatest  series  of  works  is,  in  the 
scene  where  the  Holy  Ghost  is  descending 
on  the  waiting  disciples,  we  feel  to  the  full 


342 


PAINTING: 


the  tremendous  expectancy,  the  portent  of 
the  moment,  the  wonderful  awakening  of  a 
new  power.  Quaint,  perilously  simple  in 
composition,  still  what  a  wonderful  unity 
runs  through  the  picture!  But  again,  in 
the  Christ  before  the  High  Priest,  how  effect- 
ive is  the  composition  alone;  how  well 
everything  is  tied  together;  how  beautifully 
and  with  what  rhythmic  power  the  line  of 
figures  is  subdivided  into  groups,  the  light 
mass  of  Christ's  mantle  telling  most  effec- 
tively against  the  darker  masses  on  either 
side.  For  true  dramatic  power  the  Raising 
of  Lazarus  can  hardly  be  surpassed ;  and  in 
his  Visitation  Giotto  painted  a  conception 
which  served  as  a  model  for  generations  of 
succeeding  artists,  but  which  none  could  sur- 
pass in  its  sweet  simple  dignity. 

The  Oiottesque  Painters.  —  Giotto  had 
many  followers  and  imitators,  whose  style 
was  so  closely  copied  after  his  that  it  is 
difficult  in  some  cases  to  distinguish  their 
works.  There  was  a  general  technical  ad- 
vance. Landscape  was  used  by  them, 
though  not  in  the  modern  sense.  Some 
formal  trees  represented  a  wood,  a  bluish 
space  represented  a  river  or  the  sea.  But 
all  these  pictures  are  pervaded  by  a  lofty, 
earnest  and  devout  feeling. 

Taddeo  Qaddi  (1300?- 1366)  was  Giotto's 
chief  pupil,  but  his  work  lacks  the  dramatic 
force,  the  largeness  of  conception,  and  the 
grandeur  of  form  which  distinguished  his 
master.  It  is  a  peculiarity  of  these  early 
painters  to  connect  several  incidents  into 
one  composition,  incidents  which  ought  each 
to  have  made  a  separate  picture.  In  Gaddi's 
Resurrection,  for  instance,  in  the  Santa 
Maria  Novella,  the  women  coming  to  the 
tomb,  the  resurrection  and  the  appearance 
to  Mary  are  all  represented  in  a  single  com- 
position. Giotto  did  this  rarely,  another  in- 
stance which  shows  how  far  he  was  in 
advance  of  his  time;  and  when  he  did  do  it 
it  was  done  more  successfully. 

The  strongest  of  the  Giottesque  painters 
was  Orcagna  (i329?-i3y6).  Like  Giotto  he 
was  painter,  sculptor  and  architect  in  one. 
Orcagna  carried  painting  farther  towards 
the  Renaissance  than  any  painter  of  his 
time.  The  technical  shortcomings  of  Giotto 
he  overcame  in  part,  such  for  instance  as 


perspective  and  foreshortening.  The  prin- 
ciples of  perspective  had  not  yet  been  dis- 
covered, but  Orcagna  intuitively  came 
nearer  to  them  than  any  one  before.  He 
even  foreshortens  figures  boldly,  his  draw- 
ing of  feet  and  hands  is  far  above  that  of 
Giotto,  and  his  figures  stand  more  firmly  on 
their  feet.  His  study  of  shadows  is  carried 
further  so  that  he  gets  more  relief;  and  he 
is  also  a  master  of  expression,  as  witness  the 
contrast  between  the  humble  sweetness  of 
the  Madonna  and  the  majestic  dignity  of 
the  Christ  in  his  Paradise  in  the  S.  Maria 
Novella.  But  he  does  not  have  the  instinct 
of  pictorial  composition  so  strongly  as 
Giotto.  In  his  Triumph  of  Death  in  the 
Campo  Santo,  for  instance,  we  find  a  pic- 
torial writing  rather  than  a  picture.  In  his 
eagerness  to  point  a  moral  he  has  forgotten 
the  limits  of  his  medium,  and  the  larger 
elements  of  a  well-connected  composition 
are  wanting,  whereas  Giotto  is  nearly  always 
pictorial.  In  the  Paradise,  again,  he  has 
resorted  to  the  questionable  expedient  of 
making  his  central  figure  important  by  in- 
crease in  size.  The  monumental  quality  of 
this  picture,  however,  is  magnificent,  in  that 
the  glorifying  hosts  rise  tier  above  tier 
around  the  celestial  throne. 

There  was  a  decided  decline  in  the  Giot- 
tesque school  towards  the  beginning  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  though  none  of  Giotto's 
followers  can  be  said  to  have  come  up  to  his 
excellence,  taking  him  all  in  all. 


I 


TALIAN    PAINTING    IN  THE 
GOTHIC   PERIOD.— Continued.  (\6 


The  Siennese  School  were  more  con- 
tent to  follow  Byzantine  traditions  than 
were  the  Florentines.  They  did  not  try  to 
study  nature  like  Giotto,  but  cared  more  for 
the  expression  of  spiritual  beauty.  Theirs 
was  a  more  sentimental  art — full  of  rich  de- 
tail of  ornamentation,  in  direct  contrast  to 
Giotto,  who  was  severe  simplicity  itself.  It 
was  done  with  more  nicety  and  finish,  per- 
haps, but  it  was  not  so  strong  and  virile. 

Duccio  (born  about  1260)  was  the  real 
founder  of  the  Siennese  school.  He  was  like 
Cimabue  in  his  manner,  but  his  famous  altar 


MEDIEVAL. 


343 


for  the  Cathedral  of  Sienna  shows  a  stronger 
feeling  for  ideal  beauty  than  Cimabue's.  In 
the  center-picture  the  Madonna  surrounded 
by  angels  and  saints  has  much  more  grace 
and  sweetness  than  Cimabue's.  In  his 
Burial  of  the  Virgin  he  shows  himself  a 
master  of  the  tender  emotions.  The  group- 
ing there,  as  the  apostles  tenderly  and  rev- 
erently lower  the  body  into  the  tomb,  is  fine. 
He  was  a  careful  workman.  His  drawing 
was  better  than  that  of  his  contemporaries, 
his  rendering  of  the  nude  body  very  far 
ahead  of  his  time,  and  his  drapery  was  ren- 
dered with  a  flow  of  line  almost  equal  to 
that  of  later  work. 

Simone  di  Martino  (1283-1344)  was  a  con- 
temporary of  Giotto,  and  is  said  to  have 
filled  the  same  place  in  the  Siennese  school 
that  Giotto  did  in  the  Florentine.  His 
masterpiece  is  a  wall  painting  which  fills  the 
whole  side  of  the  council  chamber  in  the 
Palazzo  Pubblico,  a  Madonna  with  saints 
and  angels.  In  this  we  see  the  sentiment 
and  tenderness  of  Duccio's  work.  The 
forms  are  rounder,  however,  and  the  pro- 
portions of  the  face  better;  but  there  is  the 
same  Siennese  love  of  ornamentation  and 
detail. 

Ambrogio  (fl.  1342)  and  Pietro  (fl.  1350) 
Lorenzetti  were  the  Siennese  who  came 
nearest  to  Giotto  in  vigor  and  power.  They 
seemed  to  have  none  of  the  weak  senti- 
mentality which  was  often  an  earmark  of 
this  school.  There  is  very  little  known 
about  the  brothers  except  that  they  worked 
together  and  that  their  work  was  similar. 
Ambrogio's  principal  work  is  the  great  wall 
painting  in  the  hall  of  the  Nine  in  the  Pub- 
lic Palace,  the  most  important  now  remain- 
ing of  the  political  allegories  of  that  time. 
In  this  his  figure  of  Peace  is  beautiful  in  its 
flow  of  line,  and  the  figure  of  Concord 
shows  a  beauty  of  form  almost  worthy  of  a 
Raphael.  In  these  masters  Siennese  paint- 
ing is  equal  to  the  Florentine,  but  after 
them  the  school  rapidly  declined  and  became 
lost  in  detail  and  archaisms. 

The  Gothic  period  was  rich  in  painters  of 
strong  devotional  feeling.  Many  of  them 
were  powerful  in  conception,  and  grandly 
simple  and  forceful  in  composition;  but 
the  times  were  changing,  and  the  people 


and  their  mode  of  thought  and  conception 
with  them.  There  are  some  painters  who 
mark  the  transition  between  the  two  peri- 
ods, though  they  remained  essentially  Gothic 
even  in  the  new  period,  iinheeding  the  rapid 
changes  around  them. 

Stamina  (1354-1413)  is  classed  with  the 
transition  painters.  He  was  for  a  long 
time  in  Spain,  and  painted  there.  Although 
his  work  shows  study  of  form,  there  still 
clings  to  it  strong  traces  of  Byzantine  con- 
ventions in  the  detail  of  face  and  figure  as 
well  as  in  his  coloring  and  his  fondness  for 
gold  embossing.  This  is  also  true  of  the 
other  two  painters  of  the  transition,  Gentile 
da  Fabrino  and  Fra  Angelico. 

Gentile  da  Fabrino  (i36o?-i44o),  living 
closer  to  the  Renaissance,  was  more  of  a 
nature  student  than  Stamina,  but  he  still 
clung  to  the  fourteenth  century  style.  His 
work  is  characterized  by  the  delicate  finish, 
the  richness  of  detail  and  color  that  distin- 
guish the  Siennese  school.  It  is  said  of 
his  pictures  that  "they  breathe  the  joy  of 
spring  and  are  full  of  an  inexpressible 
serenity."  His  Adoration  of  the  Kings,  in 
the  Academy  of  Florence,  ranks  among  the 
finest  examples  of  the  early  school. 

Fra  Angelico  (1387-1455),  a  monk  of  the 
Dominican  order,  was  almost  entirely 
Gothic  in  both  technique  and  sentiment, 
although  he  lived  far  into  the  Renaissance. 
He  was  a  man  of  great  fervor,  and  never 
began  work  without  prayer.  Tears  would 
often  interrupt  him  when  representing  the 
sufferings  of  the  Savior.  It  is  this  religious 
fervor  and  the  exquisite  beauty  and  sweet- 
ness of  spiritual  life  that  breathe  through 
his  pictures  in  spite  of  almost  childish  tech- 
nique, that  make  him  really  great;  for  he 
knew  almost  nothing  of  perspective  or  of 
light  and  shade,  his  painting  was  thin,  with 
the  faintest  shadows,  and  with  his  limited 
power  of  observation  he  knew  only  one  face, 
though  that  face  carries  divine  purity  and 
tenderness  in  it.  His  Annunciation  in  the 
Museum  of  S.  Marco  is  wonderful  in  its  ex- 
quisite sentiment.  With  a  subject  like  that 
he  excels.  His  greatest  picture  perhaps  is 
the  Crucifixion  in  the  same  S.  Marco,  where 
varying  expressions  of  devotion  and  sor- 
row are  depicted.  (See  cut,  p.  334.)  But 


344 


PAINTING: 


one  can  see  here  also  his  entire  lack  of  dra- 
matic force,  the  expression  of  the  unrepent- 
ant thief,  for  instance,  being  nothing  but  a 
grimace.  Weak  in  drawing  as  it  is  in 
places,  it  is  well  composed,  though  almost 
architectural  in  character,  strict  symmetry 
being  observed  rather  than  balance.  The 
group  of  the  Virgin  shows  the  only  devia- 
tion from  this.  The  dark  pall  of  clouds, 
stopping  just  where  it  does,  is  very  effect- 
ive in  subordinating  the  sorrowing  group 
and  throwing  into  prominence  the  central 
and  important  motif. 


T 


HE  EARLY  RENAISSANCE  IN 
ITALY:  THE  FLORENTINE 
SCHOOL.  (17) 


In  the  fifteenth  century  there  was 
as  momentous  a  change  in  Italian  painting 
as  there  had  been  in  the  thirteenth.  The 
old  attitude  toward  life,  the  old  religious 
mystical  fervor,  were  giving  way.  Medieval 
asceticism,  which  thought  of  nature  and 
man  as  sinful,  reprobate  and  low;  which 
shunned  the  purely  sensuous  as  sin  itself; 
whose  ideal  was  not  that  of  beauty  or 
comeliness,  but  rather  that  of  ugliness; 
whose  idea  of  existence  was  that  it  was  sim- 
ply to  be  endured  in  the  hope  of  a  better 
life,  now  gave  place  to  a  passionate  love  of 
nature,  to  a  deep  interest  in  man  as  man, 
to  the  love  of  beauty  for  its  own  sake,  and 
to  a  pure  delight  and  joy  in  mere  existence. 
Around  these  Italians  now  lay  a  whole  world 
full  of  beauty  and  interest,  quivering  with 
life. 

Of  this  very  life  the  artist  of  the  early 
Renaissance  became  so  enamored  that  he  was 
often  carried  too  far.  In  his  eagerness  to 
depict  incidents,  to  give  life  and  variety,  he 
oversteps  his  limits  and  loses  simplicity. 
He  will  introduce  elements  having  no  rela- 
tion to  the  real  action  of  the  picture  for  the 
sake  of  reveling  in  his  newly  found  power  of 
observation  and  appreciation  of  his  sur- 
roundings. 

This  deeper  study  and  delight  in  man  and 
nature  was  coupled  with  a  passionate  inter- 
est in  classic  art.  The  proud  feeling  of 
being  the  inheritors  of  past  greatness  in  art 


also  stimulated,  but  the  Renaissance  artist 
did  not  imitate  the  antique.  His  art  was  a 
true  expression  of  his  time  and  himself;  it 
was  truly  individual  and  modern.  Even 
those  who  studied  classic  art  most  deeply, 
and  who  were  most  strongly  influenced  by 
it,  are  distinctly  an  expression  of  their  age. 
The  scientific  side  of  art  was  also  made  a 
source  of  study.  Perspective  was  gradually 
mastered  and  formulated  into  laws;  ana- 
tomy was  studied,  and  dissections  made; 
nature  was  approached  directly  for  light  and 
shade  and  color,  which  were  mastered  more 
and  more  thoroughly.  Then,  too,  the 
painter's  range  of  subjects  and  motives 
widened.  Religious  subjects  had  hitherto 
claimed  his  entire  attention ;  now  mythol- 
ogy, history,  fable,  portraiture  and  nature 
at  large  all  furnished  him  with  subjects. 
The  religious  subject  was  not  slighted,  but 
more  of  the  human  was  imparted  to  it.  It 
was  a  glorious  age  for  the  artist  in  that  he 
was  given  an  opportunity  and  full  scope  for 
his  work.  There  was  enough  for  all  to  do, 
and  numberless  monumental  undertakings 
trained  him  to  largeness  of  conception  and 
sureness  of  hand.  The  stimulus  of  an  intel- 
ligent and  art-loving  public  was  also  his,  a 
public  that  understood  and  appreciated. 

During  the  periods  of  the  Renaissance  and 
Decadence  the  painting  of  Italy  was  divided 
into  many  schools  of  different  tendencies. 
These  were  usually  named  from  their  locali- 
ties, sometimes,  however,  from  the  peculiar 
tendency  or  purpose  of  the  school.  There 
were  fifteen  of  these  schools,  some  of  less 
importance  than  others.  A  few  of  them 
were  outgrowths  of  other  schools,  and  in 
one  instance  two  of  them  are  so  intermin- 
gled and  confused  that  it  is  almost  impossi- 
ble to  separate  them. 

The  Florentine  School  stood  easily  first  in 
the  early  Renaissance.  Form  and  line  ap- 
pealed to  it  more  than  color.  That  crown- 
ing glory  it  remained  for  the  Venetians  to 
give  to  the  art  of  Italy.  But  in  the  mastery 
of  grand  composition,  in  intellectual  grasp 
of  the  subject,  in  thorough  technical  knowl- 
edge, in  the  feeling  for  grandeur  of  sweep- 
ing lines  and  in  knowledge  of  form,  the 
Florentines  were  preeminent. 

To  this   school   belongs  the  master  who 


EARL  Y  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


345 


gave  the  first  real  note  of  the  Renaissance 
period ;  the  master  who,  like  Giotto,  was  the 
prime  mover  and  originator  in  a  new  epoch, 
and  to  whom  succeeding  generations  of 
artists  looked  for  inspiration.  This  was 
Masaccio  (1402-1428).  His  supposed  master, 
Masolino  (1383-1447)  shows  some  study  of 
nature  and  an  indication  of  the  spirit  of  the 
Renaissance  in  his  later  work,  for  instance, 
in  the  Herodias'  Daughter;  but  he  has  stud- 
ied nature  in  bits  rather  than  as  a  whole, 
and  his  work  lacks  the  largeness  of  concep- 
tion which  distinguishes  Masaccio.  Masaccio 
was  born  in  a  little  village  a  few  miles  from 
Florence.  Tommaso  Guido  was  his  proper 
name,  but  his  utter  indifference  to  his  per- 
sonal appearance,  due  to  his  zeal  for  his 
work,  earned  him  the  title  of  Slovenly  Tom. 
Vasari  speaks  of  works  he  produced  in  his 
native  village  while  still  a  child,  which  pro- 
voked admiration ;  and  he  was  only  between 
sixteen  and  eighteen  when  he  painted  some 
frescoes  in  the  church  of  S.  dementi  at 
Rome.  These,  however,  have  been  painted 
over,  and  there  is  nothing  left  of  Masaccio's 
hand.  Before  he  was  twenty-one  he  com- 
menced those  remarkable  frescoes  in  the 
Brancacci  Chapel  of  the  church  of  Santa 
Maria  del  Carmine,  which  made  that  chapel 
a  source  of  inspiration  to  such  men  as  Mich- 
elangelo, Raphael,  Leonardo  da  Vinci  and 
other  painters  of  great  fame.  Here  are 
works  which  are  painted  for  the  love  of  na- 
ture, for  the  beauty  of  form,  for  the  charm 
of  light  and  shade,  and  for  atmospheric 
effects.  This  was  a  new  impulse  in  art,  the 
beginning  of  the  Renaissance. 

The  scenes  he  depicted  in  the  Brancacci 
chapel  are  all  from  the  life  of  St.  Peter  with 
the  exception  of  two  which  represent  Adam 
and  Eve,  and  the  Expulsion.  These  two 
were  introduced  because  St.  Peter  was  the 
keeper  of  Paradise.  In  them  we  find  the 
first  instance  in  Italian  painting  where  the 
human  figure  is  treated  for  the  beauty  of  its 
form,  where  the  light  and  shade  is  made  to 
yield  charm,  and  where  the  true  values  of 
nature  are  attempted.  In  the  Expulsion  the 
figure  of  Eve  is  not  so  successful  as  that  of 
Adam,  which  is  superb  in  strength  and  grace 
and  in  its  modeling.  These  two  figures  are 
really  enveloped  in  air,  the  first  instance  of 


this  in  Italian  art.  The  caress  of  light  and 
shade  over  the  surfaces,  and  the  modulation 
of  the  values  from  one  plane  to  another  on 
the  figure  are  wonderful  in  their  truth  and 
beauty.  Details  like  hands  and  feet  are  still 
unmastered;  but  the  life  and  vigor  of  the 
figures,  and  the  truth  of  their  action,  which 
is  made  to  express  the  significance  of  the 
moment,  are  admirable.  The  grief,  shame 


ADAM    AND    EVE.       MASACCIO. 


and  despair  of  the  two  figures  are  given  with 
a  true  artistic  breadth.  In  the  Adam  and 
Eve  in  the  Garden  the  figure  of  Eve  is  beau- 
tiful, and  it  is  the  first  really  graceful  de- 
lineation of  the  nude  female  form. 

In  another  picture,  St.  Peter  Baptizing, 
Masaccio  shows  still  further  his  growing 
mastery  over  the  human  form  and  its  ex- 
pression. In  this  he  introduces  among  the 


346 


PAINTING: 


RESURRECTION    OF    THE   KING'S    SON.       T.    MASACCIO. 


crowd  a  naked  youth  who  stands  waiting  his 
turn,  shivering-  with  cold. 

Masaccio  was  a  master  in  handling  drapery. 
He  treated  it  in  broad  masses  with  grand 
free  lines,  and  the  modeling  of  the  body 
makes  itself  felt  beneath.  He  mastered  fore- 
shortening as  it  had  never  been  done  before, 
and  well  understood  both  linear  and  aerial 
perspective.  It  has  been  said  of  him  that  he 
painted  the  soul  as  well  as  the  body,  and  we 
can  well  believe  it  when  looking  at  the  head 
of  Christ  in  the  Tribute  Money.  In  com- 
position he  also  shows  the  modern  freedom. 
He  is  no  longer  tied  down  by  the  stiffness 
of  architectural  setting,  but  treats  composi- 
tion for  pictorial  effect.  The  last  picture 
upon  which  he  was  engaged,  The  Resurrec- 
tion of  the  King's  Son,  was  left  unfinished 
by  him  and  completed  by  Filippino  Lippi. 
Each  figure  and  each  head  in  it  is  distinct 
with  individuality  and  interest.  The  gen- 
eral type  of  former  days  is  gone.  He  shows 
here  a  surprising  draftsmanship  and  grasp 
of  individuality,  but  everything  helps  to- 
wards the  general  effect. 

He  died,  still  a  young  man,  from  poison, 
it  is  said,  but  he  had  carried  painting  with  a 
mighty  advance  toward  the  High  Renais- 
sance. The  contemporaries  and  followers  of 
Masaccio  did  not  have  the  genius  to  rise  to 
his  excellence.  Some  took  up  nature  in  a 
half-hearted  way;  others  still  clung  to  the 
traditions  of  the  past  with  its  gold  emboss- 


ing and  excessive  ornamental  detail;  others 
again  lost  themselves  in  the  literal  imita- 
tion of  nature. 


T 


HE     FLORENTINE 
Continued.  (18) 


SCHOOL.— 


Paolo  Uccello  (1396?-! 479?)  was  the 
first  to  apply  geometry  to  perspec- 
tive. He  made  a  science  of  it,  but  Vasari 
says  he  spent  so  much  time  on  the  intrica- 
cies of  perspective,  neglecting  meanwhile 
the  study  of  the  figure,  that  he  degenerated 
instead  of  advancing  as  he  grew  older. 

Andrea  del  Castagno  (1390-1457)  was  a 
coarse,  violent  man,  it  is  said.  His  realism 
was  a  coarse  exaggeration,  and  he  painted 
saints  who  look  more  like  criminals  than  the 
characters  they  are  supposed  to  represent. 
His  St.  John  the  Baptist,  in  the  Academy  of 
Fine  Arts  in  Florence,  is  a  good  example  of 
these  traits. 

Antonio  del  Pollajuolo  (1426-1498)  was  the 
first  Italian  painter  to  study  anatomy  from 
dissection.  He  was  a  goldsmith,  sculptor 
and  painter  in  one,  and  this  training  is  evi- 
dent in  his  painting.  There  is  hardness  of 
line  and  a  good  deal  of  fine  execution  trace- 
able to  the  goldsmith's  trade,  combined  with 
a  sculpturesque  modeling  of  the  form.  Like 
others  of  his  time,  he  was  too  fond  of  detail, 
and  studied  it  more  than  the  general  mass. 


MADONNA,    INFANT    JESUS   AND    ST.    JOHN    BY    S.    BOTTICELLI. 


EARL  Y  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


349 


He  carried  realism  so  far  in  some  details  as 
to  neglect  an  artist's  privilege  of  selection. 
For  instance,  in  his  altar-piece  in  the  Uffizi 
Gallery  containing  the  figures  of  SS.  James, 
Eustace  and  Vicentius,  the  legs  of  one  of 
the  saints  are  extremely  ugly.  Their  gar- 
ments are  almost  painfully  finished  in  detail, 
brocaded  stuffs  and  jewels  being  rendered 
in  the  minutest  way.  Pollajuolo  was  best 
when  he  represented  force,  as  in  the  small 
panel  pictures  representing  the  encounter  of 
Hercules  with  Antaeus  and  with  the  Hydra. 
His  masterpiece  is  supposed  to  be  the  St. 
Sebastian  in  the  National  Gallery,  London. 

Baldovinetti  (1427-1499)  also  painted  with 
painful  minuteness.  He  tried  to  discover 
new  methods  of  painting  on  walls,  and 
thought  he  had  found  a  way  of  preserving 
frescoes  from  dampness.  He  would  lay  in 
his  painting  in  true  fresco,  and  then  work 
over  it  with  color  mixed  with  yolks  of  eggs 
and  varnish.  The  result  was  that  his  finish 
after  a  time  peeled  off  and  left  the  bare  lay- 
ing-in.  Baldovinetti  painted  a  great  deal  of 
still  life  and  bits  of  nature  in  a  minute  lit- 
eral way.  The  age  was  one  of  experiment- 
ing and  feeling  the  way  through  new  diffi- 
culties; there  were  so  many  untried  things 
to  be  overcome  that  one  need  not  wonder 
that  many  of  these  men  forgot  the  end  for 
the  means. 

Cosimo  Rosselli  (1439-1507)  was  at  first  a 
follower  of  Masaccio,  but  later  degenerated. 
His  frescoes  in  the  Sistine  Chapel  are  hardly 
worthy  of  their  place.  He  is  poor  in  draw- 
ing, and  his  figures  are  lame  and  without 
grace,  but  he  is  of  interest  as  being  the  mas- 
ter of  Fra  Bartolommeo. 

Benozzo  Gozzoli  (i42o?-i497?)  is  a  painter 
about  whom  there  seems  to  be  a  great  diver- 
sity of  opinion.  Some  will  have  it  that  he 
was  simply  a  machine-copyist,  others  laud 
the  charm  of  life  and  movement  in  his  pic- 
tures. There  is  no  doubt  about  his  being  a 
man  who  adopted  and  combined  the  charac- 
teristics of  many  masters.  He  is  distin- 
guished by  a  peculiarly  rich  and  almost 
extravagant  fancy,  and  by  an  execution  of 
the  utmost  rapidity.  His  pictures  teem 
with  life,  and  are  full  of  brightness  and 
vivacity.  When  young  lie  went  to  Rome 
and  painted  there  with  Fra  Angelico.  His 


earlier  work  decidedly  shows  the  influence 
of  Fra  Angelico,  but  without  the  strong 
religious  fervor  of  that  master.  His  deco- 
rations in  the  Chapel  of  the  Riccardi  Palace 
fully  show  the  richness  of  ornament  and 
detail,  the  crowding  of  incidents  and  the 
peculiar  brightness  and  life  of  his  work. 
Here  he  painted  the  journey  of  the  Magi  or 
Three  Kings  to  Bethlehem.  It  is  full  of 
figures  in  all  sorts  of  movement  and  posture. 
His  colors  are  rather  harsh,  but  bright  and 
fall  of  a  certain  charm.  His  motif  is  a 
cavalcade  winding  through  a  landscape. 
The  moving  procession  of  figures  and  ani- 
mals makes  a  decorative  line  of  great  inter- 
est. There  are  richness,  life,  fancy,  and 
vivacity,  but  the  picture  lacks  the  simplicity 
of  a  great  conception.  In  the  altar  recess 
of  this  chapel  he  painted  Paradise  repre- 
sented as  a  garden  of  roses  crowded  with 
groups,  single  figures,  and  angels. 

This  picture  has  a  good  deal  of  poetic 
charm  in  it.  A  group  of  kneeling  angels  is 
full  of  sweetness  and  sentiment,  and  one 
figure  especially  is  one  of  the  most  charm- 
ing of  early  Renaissance  painting.  His 
works  in  the  Campo-Santo  at  Pisa  are  reck- 
oned his  greatest.  Here  he  painted  a  series 
of  frescoes  illustrating  the  whole  story  of 
the  Old  Testament  from  Noah  to  Joseph. 
It  took  him  sixteen  years  to  complete  them, 
a  short  time  for  twenty-two  immense  pic- 
tures. 

The  man  to  take  up  Masaccio's  work  in 
some  measure,  and  to  carry  forward  the 
tendencies  indicated  by  him  was 

Fra  Pilippo  Lippi,  a  Carmelite  monk 
(1406-1469).  He  is  even  supposed  to  have 
been  a  pupil  of  Masaccio.  In  his  early  style 
he  was  so  imbued  with  Masaccio's  manner 
that  Vasari  says,  "Masaccio's  spirit  had  en- 
tered Fra  Filippo  Lippi'sbody. "  Fra  Filip- 
po,  however,  was  distinctly  different  from 
Masaccio  in  many  essentials.  The  severe 
dignity  and  breadth  of  Masaccio's  style  is 
not  his.  He  is  more  playful  and  rich  in 
fancy,  shows  more  fondness  for  detail  and 
incident,  and  there  is  nothing  of  the  grand 
in  him.  For  his  time  he  was  a  master  of 
color  and  of  light  and  shade,  but  in  the  feel- 
ing for  grandeur  of  line  he  fell  below 
Masaccio.  It  has  been  said  of  him  that  he 


35° 


PAINTING: 


MADONNA    ADORING    CHILD.       FILIPI'O    LIPPI. 

was  the  first  to  enjoy  the  fullness  of  life 
heartily  even  in  its  chance  manifestations, 
and  he  was  the  first  to  represent  the  ex- 
uberant playfulness  of  youth.  He  was  one 
of  the  earliest  to  take  the  individual  faces  of 
those  about  him  as  models  for  his  sacred 
characters  and  to  clothe  them  in  contem- 
porary costumes.  There  is  very  little  of  the 
religious  about  Fra  Filippo's  work.  Human 
life  and  thought  and  feeling  are  what  in- 
terest him.  His  Madonnas,  for  instance, 
are  the  plain  everyday  mothers  of  the  earth, 
but  they  are  treated  with  the  greatest  feel- 
ing and  tenderness. 

His  Madonna  Adoring  the  Divine  Child, 
in  the  Uffizi  Gallery,  is  a  beautiful  example. 
The  Madonna  of  the  medieval  period  is  con- 
scious of  her  own  divinity;  here  is  a  mother 
with  her  child  as  her  only  thought.  The 
naively-treated  landscape  in  the  background 


gives  promise  of  what  is  to  come 
in  the  High  Renaissance.  The 
face  of  one  of  the  two  little  angels 
holding  the  Christ  child  up  to  the 
mother  shows  a  curious  technical 
shortcoming,  in  that  the  head  of 
the  angel  is  tilted  and  the  artist 
has  been  unable  to  draw  the  dif- 
ferent features  with  one  plane 
running  through  them.  This  gives 
a  curiously  twisted  appearance  to 
the  face. 

Even  the  depicting  of  Paradise 
is  to  Fra  Filippo  only  an  oppor- 
tunity to  portray  the  human  and 
human  interests.     His  Coronation 
of  the  Virgin,  in  the  Galleria  An- 
tica  c  Moderna  in  Florence,  has 
earthly   accessories     and    human 
incidents;  for  instance,  a  mother 
and    child   who  seem  to  take  no 
special  interest  in  what  is  going 
on.     The  All-Father  himself  is  a 
kindly,  human  old  man,  and  some 
of  the  saints  are  posing  for  the 
spectators  rather  than  attending 
to  the  central  action.     Still  there 
is  a    wholesomeness   and   joy   of 
life  that  make   it  very  charming. 
Fra  Filippo's  greatest  work  is 
the  fresco  in  the  choir  of  the  Ca- 
thedral  of   Prato,    depicting   the 
histories  of   John   the    Baptist    and   of    St. 
Stephen.     The  Death  of  St.  Stephen  is  con- 
sidered his   masterpiece,    and   in   it  he    al- 
most ascends  to  the  grandeur  of  Masaccio's 
compositions.     The  attitudes  and  sense  of 
motion  of  the  figures  in  these  compositions 
are  among  the  most  finely  conceived  up  to 
his  time. 

The  picture  that  he  painted  towards  the 
end  of  his  life  in  the  apse  of  the  choir  in  the 
Cathedral  at  Spoleto  is  the  first  semidome 
picture  in  Italian  art  arranged  with  freedom 
of  composition.  Severe  decorative  bands 
parallel  to  the  horizontal  lines  of  the  dome 
had  been  the  scheme  of  composition  before. 
Here  the  grouping  and  lines  are  freer  and 
more  pictorial,  while  still  conforming  to  the 
architectural  lines.  Fra  Filippo  died  in 
Spoleto  while  this  picture  was  still  unfinished, 
and  his  pupil,  Fra  Dimante  completed  it. 


EARL  Y  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITALY. 


35* 


T 


HE     FLORENTINE     SCHOOL.— 
Continued.  (19) 


With  Sandro  Botticelli  (1446-1510) 
we  come  to  one  of  the  most  indi- 
vidual painters  of  the  Early  Renaissance. 
He  was  first  trained  to  be  a  goldsmith,  but 
was  later  placed  under  Fra  Filippo  Lippi, 
whose  influence  is  strongly  shown  in  his 
earlier  work.  Botticelli's  originality  was 
not  long  in  asserting  itself,  however,  and  he 
is  one  who  charms  by  the  individuality  of 
his  temperament.  A  contemporary  and 
friend  of  Savonarola,  he  was  strongly  in- 
fluenced by  his  religious  feeling,  and  his 
work  shows  a  depth  of  religious  sentiment 
which  is  often  absent  from  the  painters  of 
the  time.  His  Madonna,  Child  and  St.  John 
in  the  Louvre,  and  the  Madonna  and  Child 
Crowned  by  Angels  in  the  Uffizi  are  charged 
with  a  depth  of  feeling  which  must  touch 
chords  in  any  beholder. 

The  Uffizi  picture  is  a  circular  composi- 
tion, and  how  beautifully  the  subject  fills 
its  space!  In  Botticelli  the  Florentine  feel- 
ing for  line  comes  out  to  the  fullest  extent, 
only  his  line  is  thoroughly  an  expression  of 
himself.  In  this  picture  every  line  com- 
poses with  the  circle.  The  arrangement  of 
spots  of  heads,  hands,  arms,  and  of  the  body 
of  the  child  is  felt  to  so  beautifully  fill  the 
space.  In  the  matter  of  arrangement  he 
has  left  nothing  to  be  desired,  and  the  qual- 
ity of  his  beautifully  flowing  graceful  line 
speaks  as  do  tone  melodies  in  music. 

The  public  often  looks  merely  for  the 
story  in  a  picture.  The  success  with  which 
a  certain  story  or  moment  of  a  story  is  pre- 
sented demands  attention,  while  other  quali- 
ties of  perhaps  greater  import  are  over- 
looked. We  all  feel  that  in  music  the 
anecdotal  is  out  of  place.  We  do  not  look 
for  it,  and  we  are  swayed  by  sounds  which 
tell  no  story,  but  which  impart  to  us  the 
mood  and  feelings  of  the  composer.  But 
how  many  are  stirred  in  the  same  way  by 
line  just  as  fully  charged  with  feeling? 
The  delight  and  joy  in  pure,  expressive  line 
is  as  yet  only  a  remote  possibility  to  the 
many.  Line,  like  color,  may  express  any 
range  of  feeling,  from  overwhelming  power 
to  the  most  exquisite  tenderness. 


In  the  Louvre  Madonna  the  arrangement 
of  figures  fills  the  rectangular  field  as  beau- 
tifully as  the  Uffizi  composition  fills  the  cir- 
cular one.  It  is,  perhaps,  a  more  complete 
pictorial  rendering  than  the  Uffizi  picture, 
for  the  light  and  shade  is  carried  farther 
and  made  more  a  part  of  the  pictorial 
scheme.  Accessories  are  also  made  more 
subservient  to  the  principal  feature,  and 
the  child  is  much  more  successful.  There 
is  a  little  affectation  about  the  child  in  the 
Uffizi  picture,  whereas  here  it  is  rendered 
with  a  most  tender  and  exquisite  sentiment 
— natural,  childlike,  but  holy.  (See  the  cut, 

P-  347-) 

Botticelli  was  a  strong  draughtsman,  and 
studied  nature  carefully.  Indeed,  he  drew 
so  well  that  artists  after  his  time  took,  the 
utmost  pains  to  secure  examples  of  his 
drawings.  The  head  of  the  angel  to  the 
right  in  the  Uffizi  Madonna  can  hardly  be 
approached  for  pure,  expressive  drawing. 
He  was  a  learned  student  of  the  antique, 
and  was  one  of  the  first  to  take  subjects 
from  it.  Indeed,  he  was  the  first  Floren- 
tine to  show  a  preference  for  mythological 
subjects.  His  Birth  of  Venus,  in  the  Uffizi, 
and  the  Calumny,  after  Apelles  from 
Lucian's  description,  are  fine  examples  of 
this.  Allegory,  too,  claimed  his  attention, 
and  here  his  rich  imagination  and  originality 
were  allowed  full  scope.  The  famous  so- 
called  Allegory  of  Spring  is  a  fine  piece  of 
decorative  painting.  In  it  the  long  willowy 
figures  of  the  Three  Graces  are  beautiful  in 
their  grace  and  flow  of  line.  The  rich, 
rather  conventional  treatment  of  back- 
ground adds  to  the  decorative  effect.  Bot- 
ticelli was  a  good  colorist,  and  his  pictures 
are  full  of  the  feeling  of  motion.  His  best 
composed  historical  painting  is  the  Adora- 
tion of  the  Magi,  now  in  the  Uffizi.  This 
picture  made  his  fame  so  great  that  Pope 
vSixtus  IV.  commanded  that  Botticelli 
should  be  made  superintendent  of  the 
painting  then  being  done  in  the  Sistine 
Chapel.  Here  he  painted  some  large  fres- 
coes, Christ's  Temptation  in  the  Wilderness, 
several  scenes  from  the  life  of  Moses,  and 
several  large  portraits  of  Popes  in  the 
niches.  Life,  motion,  action  are  character- 
istics of  these  frescoes.  After  completing 


352 


PAINTING: 


them  Botticelli  returned  to  Florence,  where 
he  became  so  fanatical  a  follower  of 
Savonarola  that  he  neglected  and  finally 
abandoned  his  work  altogether.  He  would 
have  died  of  starvation  in  his  old  age,  but 
for  the  munificence  and  care  of  Lorenzo  de 
Medici. 

Filippino  Lippi  (i457?-i504)  is  said  by 
Vasari  to  have  been  the  illegitimate  son  of 
Fra  Filippo  Lippi,  but  it  is  more  likely  that 
he  was  an  adopted  son.  When  Fra  Filippo 
died  Filippino  came  under  the  charge  of 
Botticelli,  who  brought  him  up  and  in- 
structed him.  So  it  is  said,  at  least;  but 
Filippino's  style  was  more  like  Fra  Filip- 
pu's  than  it  was  like  Botticelli's. 

While  yet  in  his  first  youth  Filippino  was 
selected  to  complete  the  decorations  of  the 
Brancacci  Chapel  which  Masaccio  had  left 
unfinished.  The  severe,  simple  grandeur 
of  Masaccio's  style  influenced  Filippino 
greatly;  for  his  style  had  never  so  much  of 
the  dignity  of  simplicity  afterwards  as  he 
displayed  in  these  paintings.  He  first 
painted-in  the  central  part  of  the  unfinished 
painting  of  Masaccio's  Resurrection  of  the 
King's  Son.  His  own  subjects  are  The 
Crucifixion  of  St.  Peter,  St.  Peter  and  St. 
Paul  before  the  Proconsul,  and  St.  Peter 
Liberated  from  Prison. 

The  Crucifixion  of  St.  Peter  and  the  St. 
Peter  and  St.  Paul  before  the  Proconsul  are 
represented  in  one  picture,  a  mode  of  com- 
position so  often  used  in  the  Early  Renais- 
sance; but  whereas  Masaccio  succeeded  in 
the  Resurrection  of  the  King's  Son  in  mak- 
ing a  unity  of  the  composition,  Filippino  has 
really  two  distinct  compositions  within  one 
boundary,  with  nothing  definite  either  to 
separate  them  or  tie  them  together.  An  un- 
pleasant vacancy  is  thus  felt.  There  is  no 
transition  from  one  group  to  the  other.  The 
separate  figures,  however,  are  drawn  with 
great  truth  and  power.  The  action  of  each 
is  very  expressive,  and  there  is  in  them  a 
grand,  healthy  realism.  The  Liberation  of 
St.  Peter  is  beautifully  simple  and  express- 
ive, and  of  great  interest  in  line,  spotting, 
and  composition  in  general.  Filippino  could 
not  have  been  more  than  twenty  when  he 
did  the  Brancacci  decorations. 

Away  from  the    influence  of   Masaccio's 


pictures  his  style  changed  and  became  more 
like  Fra  Filippo  Lippi's.  There  was  the 
same  liveliness,  the  same  exuberance,  the 
same  animation  and  playfulness.  Simplic- 
ity gave  way  to  delight  in  detail,  but  there 
was  a  distinct  advance  in  such  technical 
features  as  the  rendering  of  textures  and  of 
light  and  shade.  Drawing  had  been  en- 
tirely mastered.  Such  errors  of  foreshort- 
ening as  are  found  in  Fra  Filippo  are  en- 
tirely absent  from  a  picture  like  Filippino 
Lippi's  Adoration  of  the  Magi  in  the  Uffizi. 
This  is  rather  crowded  in  composition,  but 
in  the  sure  characterization  of  individuals, 
in  the  grace  and  expressiveness  of  figures, 
and  in  the  treatment  of  landscape,  it  is  a 
distinct  advance.  The  quality  of  delighted 
though  still  timid  and  reverential  approach 
of  the  figures  towards  the  Holy  Child  is 
beautifully  rendered. 


T 


HE     FLORENTINE     SCHOOL.— 
Concluded.  (20) 


Filippino  is  also  represented  by 
frescoes  in  the  church  of  S.  Maria 
Sopra  Minerva  in  Rome.  All  are  scenes 
from  the  legend  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas. 
Allegorical  representation  is  made  use  of 
freely  in  these  compositions,  and  they  are 
crowded  with  figures  in  the  same  express- 
ive attitude,  with  the  same  fine  characteri- 
zation, which  is  a  distinguishing  mark  of 
Filippino.  In  the  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
Defending  the  Church  against  a  School  of 
Heretics  the  composition  is  admirably  tied 
together.  The  work  which,  perhaps,  stands 
out  the  most  conspicuously  among  the 
frescoes  is  St0  Thomas  Spoken  to  by  the 
Crucifix.  Filippino's  color  was  bright  and 
clear  and  of  a  rosy  tone.  His  last  work 
was  a  Deposition  from  the  Cross  of  which 
he  had  finished  only  the  upper  half  when 
death  interrupted  him.  It  was  finished  by 
Perugino,  but  the  combination  is  not  a  suc- 
cessful one.  The  men  were  too  dissimilar 
in  style. 

Filippino  was  much  lamented,  "for  he 
had  ever  been  courteous,  obliging  and 
friendly,  and  had  been  loved  for  his  modest 
propriety  of  life."  While  his  funeral 


EARLY  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITALY. 


353 


ADORATION    OF    THE    MAGI.       FILIPPINO    LIPVl. 


passed  through  the  streets  of  Florence,  all 
the  shops  were  closed,  a  mark  of  respect 
usually  paid  only  to  Princes. 

Qhirlandajo  (1449-1494)  carried  to  per- 
fection Masaccio's  style.  Like  him  he  was 
strong  in  composition,  handling  masses  and 
line  in  a  large  way.  There  is  breadth  and 
dignity  about  Ghirlandajo's  work.  He 
was  a  fine  draughtsman  and  handled  dra- 
peries in  a  strong,  simple  way.  His  work 
does  not  express  the  intensely  personal 
temperament  of  Botticelli,  but  it  is  more 
robust.  Art,  at  the  time,  as  we  have 


seen,  was  in  danger  from  literalism,  from 
love  of  doing  the  things  composing  the 
picture.  Ghirlandajo  loved  the  charm  of 
life  and  beauty  and  the  zest  of  overcoming 
difficulties  as  well  as  any;  but  he  makes  it 
entirely  subservient  to  the  grand  law  of 
unity  and  simplicity,  to  the  meaning  of 
the  moment  represented.  Like  his  fellow 
painters,  Ghirlandajo  introduced  portraits 
of  his  contemporaries  into  his  pictures;  but 
in  contrast  to  them  he  did  not  paint  them 
as  holy  personages,  taking  part  in  the  cen- 
tral action,  but  rather  as  interested  speeta- 


354 


PAINTING: 


tors.  He  was  fond  of  introducing  rich  and 
fine  architecture  into  his  pictures,  and  he 
would  render  it  in  complete  perspective. 

Ghirlandajo's  power,  unlike  that  of  so 
many,  increased  with  his  age.  There  is  a 
continuous  progress  in  his  work  from  his 
youth  till  his  death.  His  finest  works  are 
done  in  fresco.  He  seemed  to  feel  more 
at  home  there,  and  painted  with  such  sure 
hand  that  his  frescoes  hardly  had  to  be 
retouched  in  tempera,  a  characteristic  which 
made  them  for  centuries  almost  proof 
against  the  ravages  of  climate. 

Among  his  earlier  works  are  those  done 
in  the  Sistine  Chapel  at  Rome.  Of  these 
only  one,  The  Calling  of  SS.  Peter  and 
Andrew,  exists.  Ghirlandajo's  growth  was 
slow,  and  in  the  frescoes  in  the  Cappela  S. 
Fina  at  S.  Gimignano,  there  is  a  certain 
stiffness  and  hardness  in  the  Vision  of  St. 
Fina.  The  draperies  look  hard  and  carved, 
the  attitudes  are  wooden  compared  to  those 
of  his  later  works.  The  freedom  and  power 
of  grand  composition  has  not  yet  fully  come. 
The  frescoes  in  the  Sasetti  Chapel  in  the 
church  of  the  Trinita  at  Florence,  however, 
contain  some  works  which  are  the  flower  of 
all  that  had  as  yet  been  done  in  Italian 
monumental  painting. 

These  decorations  represented  the  life  of 
St.  Francis.  The  Death  of  St.  Francis  here  is 
one  of  the  best  pictures  of  modern  art.  The 
varying  expressions  of  grief,  awe  and  resig- 
nation in  the  several  mourners  are  depicted 
with  masterly  skill.  The  composition  is 
grand  in  its  effect  of  variety  in  unity,  and 
there  is  the  air  of  nobility  and  dignity  in 
the  figures  which  is  so  distinctive  of  Ghir- 
landajo's style.  The  bishop  and  two  attend- 
ants to  the  left  are  marvels  of  characteriza- 
tion and  noble  drawing. 

What  one  had  gained  in  perspective, 
another  in  light  and  shade,  another  in  draw- 
ing, Ghirlandajo  united  in  himself-  and  made 
the  means  to  a  harmonious  dignified  whole. 
He  was  of  a  mold  which  could  best  express 
itself  in  the  grand,  the  monumental ;  there- 
fore his  compositions  are  truly  architectural, 
and  he  is  not  so  successful  in  his  easel  pic- 
tures. They  are  more  crowded,  less  grand. 

His  greatest  works  are  the  frescoes  in  the 
church  of  S.  Maria  Novella  at  Florence. 


This  work  was  undertaken  for  a  public- 
spirited  citizen  who  agreed  to  repair  at  his 
own  costs  the  choir,  which  was  then  in  a 
lamentable  state.  The  decorations  which 
Orcagna  had  painted  there  were  almost 
obliterated.  Ghirlandajo  was  offered  1200 
ducats  to  paint  in  the  walls  again.  He  had 
the  work  finished  in  four  years.  On  the 
ceiling  he  painted  colossal  figures  of  the 
Evangelists.  On  one  wall  he  executed 
scenes  from  the  lives  of  St.  Dominico,  St. 
Peter  the  Martyr,  and  St.  John ;  on  the  wall 
to  the  right  of  this  the  story  of  the  Virgin ; 
and  on  the  opposite  side  the  life  of  St.  John 
the  Baptist.  Grand  and  severe,  but  free 
and  not  rigid  in  composition,  fine  in  bal- 
ance, rhythm  and  opposition  of  line  and 
mass,  they  are  a  delight  to  the  eye  independ- 
ent of  the  masterly  way  in  which  the  sto- 
ries are  told.  One  can  see  here  his  mastery 
in  making  line  and  mass  tell  the  feeling  he 
wishes  to  represent.  The  Birth  of  the  Vir- 
gin, for  instance:  how  stately  the  group  of 
ladies  who  are  entering  is  rendered  by  the 
very  arrangement  of  mass  and  line.  Con- 
trast it  with  the  wild  tumult  suggested  by 
the  confused  mass  and  sharply  opposed  lines 
in  the  Slaughter  of  the  Innocents/  The 
two  compositions  of  St.  John  Preaching  and 
The  Baptism  of  Christ  are  superb  in  their 
arrangement.  In  the  latter,  for  instance, 
how  skillfully  every  line  leads  to  the  central 
group  of  Christ  and  the  Baptist.  Entirely 
a  symmetrical  arrangement,  still  how  well 
it  is  kept  from  being  stiff  or  monotonous. 

"Ghirlandajo  was,  next  to  Masaccio,  the 
most  important  master  of  the  Forentine 
School  in  the  fifteenth  century.  He  crowned 
the  tentative  work  of  his  predecessors,  and 
at  the  same  time  prepared  the  way  for  the 
coming  epoch." 

Ghirlandajo  was  for  three  years  the  mas- 
ter of  Michelangelo.  He  died  from  over- 
work, it  is  thought,  while  yet  in  the  full 
prime  of  his  powers.  He  is  buried  in  the 
Santa  Maria  Novella,  where  his  grand  fres- 
coes are  the  best  monument  to  his  greatness. 

Andrea  Verrocchio  (1435-1488)  was  more 
of  a  sculptor  than  a  painter.  His  painting 
is  hard  and  rather  dry  and  colorless;  but 
still  he  is  of  great  interest  from  the  fact  of 
his  influence  over  three  celebrated  painters 


EARL  Y  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


355 


who  were  pupils  in  his  studio,  namely, 
Perugino,  Lorenzo  di  Credi,  and  Leonardo 
da  Vinci. 

Lorenzo  di  Credi  (1450-1537)  never  out- 
grew the  fifteenth  century,  although  he 
lived  into  the  sixteenth  He  was  a  painter 
of  sentiment,  although  of  a  rather  weak 
kind.  He  was  very  painstaking,  almost 
laboriously  so,  and  fond  of  detail.  His 
drawing  is  good,  but  lacks  entirely  the  grand 
qualities  of  Ghirlandajo.  In  his  carefulness 
of  finish  he  is  very  much  like  his  great  fel- 


Piero  di  Cosirno  (1462-1521),  a  contempo- 
rary of  Lorenzo  di  Credi,  was  a  man  of  a 
peculiarly  fantastic  bent  of  mind.  He  was 
very  fond  of  mythological  and  classical  sub- 
jects. He  was  influenced  later  in  life  by 
the  great  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  but  more  in 
the  matter  of  light  and  shade  than  in  any- 
thing else.  His  light  and  shade  has  a  good 
deal  of  the  charm  and  mystery  of  Leon- 
ardo's, his  color  is  pleasant,  and  his  land- 
scape is  always  treated  in  an  interesting 
manner.  His  Perseus  and  Andromeda, 


BIRTH    OF   THE    VIRGIN.       GHIRLANDAJO. 


low  pupil,  Leonardo  da  Vinci;  but  unlike 
him  he  did  not  have  the  force  to  make  his 
work  great  through  those  very  painstaking 
qualities.  His  drawing  has  certain  ear- 
marks; a  peculiar  double-like  quality  of 
draperies  and  an  overfatness  of  children. 
He  gives  them  no  neck  to  speak  of,  and 
represents  wrists  and  ankles  as  though  the 
flesh  were  stuffed  and  tied  in  with  a  string 
at  the  joints.  All  in  all  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  sentiment  and  grace  about  Lorenzo 
di  Credi 's  work,  but  it  lacks  strength. 


in  the  Uffizi,  besides  illustrating  his  style,  is 
an  excellent  example  of  the  rather  nai've 
way  in  which  so  many  painters  of  the  day 
would  illustrate  a  story  in  progressive 
stages  on  the  same  canvas.  Perseus  is  seen 
flying  through  the  air  in  the  upper  right- 
hand  corner,  then  he  appears  again  on  the 
back  of  the  dragon,  while  the  group  sor- 
rowing over  Andromeda's  fate  in  the  lower 
left-hand  corner  is  balanced  by  one  rejoic- 
ing over  her  delivery  in  the  lower  right- 
hand  corner. 


35° 


PAINTING: 


T 


HE  UMBRTAN  AND  PERUGIAN 
SCHOOLS.  (21) 


In  the  fifteenth  century  the  Um- 
brian  and  Perugian  schools  became 
the  inheritors  of  the  sentiment  and  feeling 
so  strongly  characteristic  of  the  Siennese 
School.  That  school  saw  a  rapid  decline 
after  its  great  masters,  the  Lorenzetti,  had 
passed  away;  and  it  is  in  the  Umbrian  and 
Perugian  schools  that  we  must  now  look  for 
the  peculiar  Siennese  characteristics.  The 
force  and  intellectual  grasp  of  the  Floren- 
tine school  were  foreign  to  these  two;  but 
in  sentiment,  feeling,  and  tenderness  they 
added  a  strong  element  to  the  sum  total  of 
excellence  of  Italian  painting.  The  fusion 
of  the  excellences  of  the  Florentine  and  Um- 
brian schools  made  the  great  art  of  the  se- 
renely grand  Raphael.  The  firct  master  to 
show  decidedly  this  Umbrian  sentiment  was 

Niccolo  da  Foligno  (i43o?-i5o2),who  seems 
to  have  been  a  pupil  of  Benozzo  Gozzoli. 
The  Florentine  school,  with  its  strength  of 
line,  its  masterful  composition,  and  its  tech- 
nical grasp  on  the  real  influenced  all  the 
schools  of  Italy  more  or  less,  as  they  in  turn 
influenced  the  assimilative  genius  of  the 
Florentines,  and  so  we  find  the  Umbrian 
sentiment  and  Florentine  technique  com- 
bined in  such  masters  as  Niccolo  da  Foligno, 
Bonfiglio,  and  Fiorenzo  di  Lorenzo. 

Bonfiglio  (i425?-i496?)  shows  some  traces 
of  the  style  of  Gentile  da  Fabrino,  but  there 
is  mingled  with  it  an  unpleasant  hardness  of 
his  own. 

Fiorenzo  di  Lorenzo  (i444?-i52o)  was  pos- 
sessed of  more  refinement  in  his  conception 
and  rendering  of  form. 

Piero  della  Francesca  (i42o?-i492),  though 
an  Umbrian, was  almost  Florentine  in  spirit, 
and  had  a  decided  influence  on  the  Floren- 
tine school.  He  had  about  him  something 
of  the  Florentine  grandeur,  and  was  almost 
equal  to  Masaccio  and  Ghirlandajo  in  ren- 
dering the  nude.  He  was  the  first  to  pro- 
ject shadows  scientifically,  and  his  treatment 
of  light  and  shade  suggests  Leonardo  da 
Vinci.  In  all  he  was  a  fine  student  of  na- 
ture, and  made  direct  innovations  in  the 
Florentine  method  of  painting  in  oils.  His 
influence  coupled  with  that  of  his  great  pu- 


pil Luca  Signorelli  extended  to  all  the 
schools  of  Italy. 

Luca  Signorelli  (i44i?-i523)  has  been 
called  the  Michelangelo  of  the  Early  Re- 
naissance. Like  him  he  loved  to  represent 
the  nude  human  figure  in  all  sorts  of  atti- 
tudes with  very  often  the  boldest  foreshort- 
ening. There  was  no  sentiment  about 
Luca's  work;  in  fact,  he  was  an  Umbrian 
only  by  birth,  but  his  compositions  have  a 
grandeur  and  tremendous  power  about 
them.  An  original  genius  and  a  man  of 
great  learning,  he  was  a  powerful  influence 
in  Italian  Art.  His  knowledge  of  anatomy, 
which  was  extensive,  he  seemed  sometimes 
almost  to  parade,  and  he  was  a  fine 
draughtsman.  His  color,  however,  was  hot 
and  "bricky, "  and  not  at  all  pleasant.  His 
figures  often  have  a  polished  glassy  texture, 
but  he  certainly  drew  them  better  than  any 
of  his  contemporaries. 

His  principal  works  are  in  the  Sistine 
Chapel  in  Rome,  in  the  convent  of  Monte 
Oliveto  near  Sienna,  and  in  the  Cathedral  of 
Orvieto.  It  is  in  the  last-named  place  that 
his  greatest  works,  representing  the  Last 
Judgment,  are  found.  The  principal  ones 
are  the  four  great  pictures  representing 
Antichrist,  Hell,  the  Resurrection,  and 
Paradise.  These  are  the  first  pictures  in 
Italian  art  where  the  nude  predominates. 
Signorelli  thus  marks  a  new  epoch,  where 
anatomy  and  the  nude  is  made  a  passionate 
study.  These  frescoes  were  studied  and  in 
some  respects  almost  imitated  by  Michel- 
angelo. 

In  the  Resurrection  of  the  Dead,  a  most 
powerful  conception,  the  two  angels  are 
mighty  in  action  and  form.  They  are  unique 
for  the  time  in  being  almost  undraped. 
There  is  great  hardness  and  almost  angular- 
ity about  the  figure  of  the  resurrected  dead; 
but  in  the  Crowning  of  the  Elect  there  is 
displayed  more  grace  of  line  and  softness  of 
form,  with  a  knowledge  of  the  figure  alto- 
gether astonishing.  The  End  of  the  World 
is  a  conception  which  takes  hold  with  fear- 
ful power. 

Luca  Signorelli  is  less  powerful  in  altar- 
pieces.  His  vigorous,  almost  coarse  style 
holds  well  on  a  wall  in  large  frescoes,  but  is 
less  suited  to  panel  pictures.  Still  his  fellow 


EARL  Y  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


357 


CROWNING    OF    THE    ELECT.       L.     SIGNORELLI. 


Umbrians  are  often  too  sweet  in  sentiment 
and  too  graceful  in  pose,  so  that  a  picture 
like  his  Holy  Family  in  the  UfHzi,  hard, 
severe,  without  grace  as  it  is,  still  maintains 
a  superior  hold  by  its  power  and  strength. 

He  died  an  old  man,  working  to  the  last, 
finally  only  for  the  love  of  the  work.  His 
frescoes  in  the  Orvieto  Cathedral  were 
finished  only  three  years  before  Michel- 
angelo exhibited  his  famous  cartoon  in  com- 
petition with  Leonardo  da  Vinci. 

A  painter  of  an  entirely  different  stamp 
from  Luca  Signorelli,  and  also  a  pupil  of 
Piero  della  Francesca,  is  Melozzo  da  Forli 
(1438-1494).  In  place  of  the  square-shoul- 
dered, powerful  forms  of  Luca  Signorelli, 
Melozzo  da  Forli  is  distinguished  by  his 
love  for  youthful,  graceful  forms  of  a  nobly 
sensuous  beauty,  and  by  a  peculiarly  clear 
color.  In  the  church  of  the  Apostles  in 
Rome  he  painted  the  Ascension,  a  work  of 


beauty.  Here,  in  a  semidome,  he  repre- 
sented Christ  ascending  among  cherubs  with 
the  apostles  and  angels,  the  latter  playing 
instruments,  looking  towards  him.  The 
angels  and  apostles  were  represented  fore- 
shortened as  if  seen  from  below,  a  technical 
feat  which  caused  great  wonderment  at  the 
time,  as  nothing  like  it  had  ever  been  at- 
tempted before.  When  the  tribune  in  which 
this  was  painted  was  torn  down  in  1711  the 
figure  of  Christ  was  sawed  out,  and  is  now 
in  the  Quirinal  Palace.  Some  of  the  figures 
of  the  apostles  and  angels  were  removed  to 
the  sacristy  of  St.  Peter's.  The  angels  are 
well  known  through  photographs,  and  are 
beautiful  in  sentiment  and  in  their  full  sen- 
suous form.  (See  next  page.) 

Strongly  influenced  by  both  Signorelli 
and  Melozzo  da  Forli  was  Giovanni  Santi 
(1435?- 1 494),  the  father  of  Raphael.  He 
was  for  a  long  time  quite  overshadowed  by 


35* 


PAINTING: 


ANGEL    BY    M.    DA    FORLI. 

the  mighty  genius  of  his  son;  but  is  now 
valued  more  for  the  sake  of  his  own  work, 
which  in  many  instances  gives  promise  of 
the  beauty  which  was  to  shine  forth  in  that 
of  his  son. 

Piero  della  Francesca,  Luca  Signorelli, 
Melozzo  da  Forli,  and  even  Giovanni  Santi, 
were  all  more  or  less  Florentine  rather 
than  Umbrian;  but  in  Perugino  (1446-1524) 
the  true  Umbrian  sentiment  so  characteris- 
tic of  Foligno  and  Bonfiglio  found  its  chief 
exponent.  The  territory  of  Umbria  had 
been  especially  distinguished  as  the  peculiar 
seat  of  religious  enthusiasm,  and  Pietro 
Perugino's  work  is  saturated  with  it.  But 
even  Perugino  could  not  help  being  in- 
fluenced by  the  worship  of  the  beauty  of  na- 
ture so  strongly  felt  in  art  at  this  time. 
There  is  about  his  work  a  delicate  charm 
and  a  religious  depth  of  feeling;  but  he  is 
likely  to  be  somewhat  monotonous  in  his  fig- 
ures. Graceful  in  line  and  pose,  beautiful 
of  feature,  with  a  wistful,  yearning  sadness 
about  them,  they  nevertheless  often  run 
into  sentimentality  of  gesture  and  pose,  and 
there  is  a  sameness  of  the  tilt  of  head  and 
upturned  eyes  which  becomes  almost  un- 
pleasant when  many  of  his  pictures  are  seen 


side  by  side.  When  young,  Perugino  stud- 
ied in  Florence,  struggling  at  first  with  pov- 
erty so  dire  that  he  had  not  a  bed  to  sleep 
on.  It  was  in  a  convent  in  Florence  that  he 
learned  the  art  of  glass  painting,  and  the 
clearness  and  brilliancy  of  stained  glass  no 
doubt  greatly  influenced  his  color.  Perugino 
was  in  fact  an  excellent  technician.  He  was 
among  the  first  of  his  school  to  use  the  oil 
medium  and  obtained  many  brilliant  effects 
by  its  use.  His  composition  is  very  simple. 
In  some  cases  the  figures  are  all  represented 
on  one  plane,  and  a  strict  symmetry  is  ob- 
served, varied  only  by  a  slightly  different 
twist  of  the  head,  a  gesture  of  the  hand,  the 
position  of  a  leg,  or  the  fold  of  a  drapery. 

Such  is  the  composition  in  the  frescoes 
which  he  painted  in  the  Hall  of  Exchange 
in  Perugia.  In  the  Eternal  Father  in  Glory, 
for  instance,  the  draperies  of  the  Prophets 
and  Sibyls  are  cast  in  lines  which  oppose 
one  another  in  exact  symmetry.  Perhaps 
as  architectural  decorations  they  gain  by  it, 
but  pictorially  the  effect  is  monotonous.  In 
some  of  his  compositions  he  makes  no  at- 
tempt at  tying  the  figures  together,  as  was 
done  by  other  painters  of  his  period,  but 
places  them  simply  side  by  side  as  in  the 
Fortitude  and  Temperance  of  this  same  ser- 
ies. There  was  nothing  of  the  dramatic 
about  Perugino.  The  Transfiguration,  also 
of  this  series,  gave  a  strong  opportunity  for 
the  rendering  of  emotion;  but  we  find  in- 
stead the  same  mild,  pathetic  attitude  and 
expression. 

There  is  a  monotony  of  type  in  Perugino's 
faces,  but  in  one  composition  at  least,  the 
Deposition  from  the  Cross,  in  the  Pitti  Gal- 
lery, Florence,  we  find  a  variety  of  type  and 
a  skill  and  freedom  in  grouping  which 
places  that  composition  among  his  best- 
The  pyramidal  central  group,  flanked  on 
either  side  by  secondary  groups,  so  much 
affected  in  composition  at  the  time,  is  here 
strongly  felt.  Perugino's  Madonnas  have  a 
mild,  beautiful,  oval  face  of  heavenly  ten- 
derness and  purity.  They  are  the  forerun- 
ners of  Raphael's  divine  creations,  the 
models,  indeed,  on  which  his  earlier  Madon- 
nas were  formed  (See  the  cut,  p,  84.) 

Perugino's  earlier  struggles  with  poverty 
sadly  affected  his  later  life.  When  he  found 


EARL  Y  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


359 


his  pictures  in  demand  and  saw  himself 
growing  wealthy,  he  became  avaricious. 
His  only  thought  now  was  what  his  pictures 
would  bring  and  how  many  he  could  turn 
out.  The  galleries  of  Europe  are  full  of 
these  inferior  works  of  Perugino. 

Pinturricchio  (1454-1513)  was  Perugino's 
friend  and  assistant.  He  was  the  historical 
painter  of  the  Umbrian  school.  Unlike 
Perugino  he  never  used  oils,  devoting  him- 
self to  fresco  and  distemper.  In  variety  and 
in  the  treatment  of  landscape  Pinturricchio 
is  superior  to  Perugino ;  but  he  has  not  his 
feeling,  a  deficiency  which  he  often  at- 
tempts to  supply  by  imitation ;  and  his  com- 
positions, though  less  rigid  in  symmetry 
than  Perugino's,  very  often  lack  clearness. 
His  coloring,  though  colder  than  his  mas- 
ter's, is  still  rich  and  full.  His  most  impor- 
tant works  are  found  in  Sienna,  Spello  and 
Rome. 

Perugino's  best  pupil,  however,  next  to 
Raphael,  was  the  Spaniard  Giovanni, 
called  Lo  Spagna  ( — ?-i53o?).  But  little  of 
his  life  is  known.  His  style  was  at  first  an 
imitation  of  Perugino's;  but  in  the  High 
Renaissance  it  was  modeled  after  that  of 
Raphael,  of  whom  he  became  a  follower. 
There  is  in  Lo  Spagna's  work  some  of  the 
serene  spiritual  beauty  and  delicacy  which 
distinguishes  that  of  Raphael.  His  greatest 
picture  is  a  Madonna  Enthroned,  in  the 
church  of  St.  Francis  at  Assisi. 


s 


CHOOLS    OF     FERRARA,     BO- 
LOGNA  AND  LOMBARDY.(22) 


The   School   of    Ferrara   was  in  its 

beginning  influenced  by  the  Paduan 
School,  of  which  we  shall  hear  later.  Its 
style  was  stiff,  and  full  of  mannerisms; 
anatomical  rendering  was  too  much  in- 
sisted on;  and  there  was  a  coarseness  of 
form  and  an  infinity  of  detail  together  with 
ornamentation  of  a  peculiarly  fantastic  kind. 

Cosimo  Tura  (i425?-i498)  was  the  best 
painter  of  its  earlier  period.  A  peculiarly 
hard  angularity  of  line  and  form  was  charac- 
teristic of  him. 

Francesco  Cossa  (fl.  1450-1470)  was  a 
stronger  painter  with  a  somewhat  morbid 


feeling  in  his  work.  Cossa,  Ercole  d 
Giulio  Grandi  ( — ?-i53i)  and  Lorenzo  Costa 

(i46o?-i536)  formed  the  principal  masters 
of  the  earlier  school.  These  men  after- 
wards removed  to  Bologna,  where  their 
Paduan  style  was  modified  by  the  Umbrian 
sentiment.  Thus  the  schools  of  Ferrara  and 
Bologna  became  confused  in  one  another, 
and  have  remained  so  in  history  to  the 
present  day. 

Lorenzo  Costa  was  perhaps  the  strongest 
influence  in  the  School  of  Bologna,  and  he 
might  be  called  its  real  founder.  His 
earlier  work  was  rugged;  but  later,  under 
the  influence  of  the  South,  his  work  be- 
came delicate  in  drawing  and  color,  with  a 
soft  light  and  shade,  fine  detail  and  almost 
Peruginesque  sentiment.  This  influence  of 
Perugino  can  be  distinctly  seen  in  the  most 
important  of  the  painters  of  Bologna,  name- 
ly, Francia  (1450-1518).  Till  his  fortieth 
year  he  was  a  goldsmith.  His  earliest  pic- 
ture bears  the  date  of  1490.  It  was  then 
that  Lorenzo  Costa  came  to  Bologna,  and  it 
was  probably  through  him  that  Francia  be- 
came interested  in  painting,  and  it  was  per- 
haps to  him  that  he  owed  his  instruction. 
His  earliest  work,  a  Madonna  Enthroned 
and  Surrounded  by  Saints,  shows  decidedly 
the  influence  of  his  training  as  a  goldsmith. 
Smooth,  shiny  surfaces  of  drapery,  hard 
sharp  edges,  minute  detail  as  if  done  by  a 
graver  are  its  characteristics.  Francia's 
second  work  evoked  a  storm  of  enthusiasm 
in  Bologna.  At  last  the  Bolognese  had  an 
artist  who  was  strong  enough  to  vie  with 
those  of  Florence,  Perugia  or  Venice. 

There  is  a  continuous  progress  in  Fran- 
-  cia's  work.  The  hardness  and  detail  of  his 
first  picture  disappear;  more  grace  of  line, 
softness  and  truth  of  texture,  and  more  sim- 
plicity become  the  characteristics.  With 
more  power  of  technique,  with  more  appre- 
ciation of  beauty,  he  never  loses  the  deep 
religious  feeling  with  which  he  was  imbued. 

His  earliest  works  were  in  oils,  but  later  he 
became  encouraged  to  paint  in  fresco.  To 
one  trained  in  minute,  smooth,  detailed 
work  which  could  be  gradually  brought  to  a 
finish,  fresco  was  a  difficult  undertaking. 
Here  sureness,  swiftness,  and  broadness  of 
handling  were  demanded,  but  he  succeeded 


36° 


PAINTING: 


at  once.  His  masterpiece  is  perhaps  the 
Madonna  Adoring  her  Child,  in  the  Pin- 
akothek  at  Munich.  Surely  no  one  ever 
gave  more  sweetness  or  more  divine  human- 
ity in  a  Madonna  than  did  Francia  in  this 
picture.  Simple  in  composition,  beautiful 
in  line,  and  pervaded  by  a  depth  of  feeling 
without  affectation,  it  is  one  of  the  loveliest 
pictures  of  Early  Renaissance  art. 

Although  Francia  was    thirty-four  years 


MADONNA   ADORING    HER    CHILD.       FRANCIA. 


Raphael's  senior,  there  was  a  strong 
friendship  between  these  two  men.  An- 
extant  letter  from  Raphael  to  Francia  con- 
cludes affectionately,  "Continue  to  love  me 
as  I  love  you  with  all  my  heart."  When 
Raphael  had  finished  his  famous  picture  of 
St.  Cecilia  surrounded  by  other  saints,  he 
sent  it  to  its  destination,  Bologna,  to  the 
care  of  his  friend  Francia,  and  asked  him 
to  examine  it  in  order  to  see  if  it  had 
suffered  harm.  If  so,  he  begs  Francia  to 
restore  it,  and  if  he  could  find  any  faults,  to 
alter  them.  The  ugly  story  of  Francia's 
dying  of  chagrin  from  s'eeing  himself  sur- 
passed in  this  picture  is  entirely  incompati- 


ble with  his  gentle  and  generous  spirit.  His 
character  was  as  beautiful  as  the  spirit  of 
his  work. 

The  Lombard  School  is  a  name  given  to  a 
number  of  isolated  schools  or  men  in  the 
Lombardy  region.  At  best  it  is  a  vague 
name  in  history.  In  the  fifteenth  century 
the  school  had  very  little  importance. 
Milan  was  the  principal  center  of  activity, 
and  drew  painters  from  the  surrounding 
cities,  these  forming  what  is  called  the 
Milanese  School. 

Vincenzo  Foppa  (fl.  1455-1492)  was  prob- 
ably the  founder  of  the  school.  He  seems 
to  have  received  his  training  in  the  Paduan 
school,  and  his  nude  figures  have  the 
statuesque  feeling  of  that  school. 

Borgognone  ( — ?-i523),  said  to  have  been 
Vincenzo  Foppa's  pupil,  has  been  called  the 
Fra  Angelico  of  this  school.  More  severely 
realistic  and  more  a  master  of  form  than 
that  painter,  he  coupled  with  these  qualities 
much  sentiment  and  spiritual  feeling.  Un- 
der Leonardo  da  Vinci's  influence  the  Mi- 
lanese school  was  destined  to  be  of  much 
import  in  the  High  Renaissance  period. 


s 


CHOOLS  OF  PADUA,  VERONA 
AND  VICENZA.(23) 


It  was  upon  the  Paduan  School  that 
the  study  of  the  antique  marbles 
exercised  the  most  powerful  influence.  At 
first  the  painters  of  this  school  missed  en- 
tirely the  ideal  spirit  of  the  antique,  bor- 
rowing only  outward  forms  and  decorations. 
Their  work  was  rather  a  patching  up  of 
classic  fragments  than  a  creative  art.  It 
was  lacking  also  in  broadness,  and  was, 
moreover,  less  pictorial  than  plastic  until 
the  influence  of  the  Venetian  School  set  in. 
The  man  who  gave  the  Paduan  School  its 
character  was 

Francesco  Squarcione  (1394-1474).  He 
was  a  man  of  learning,  and  had  traveled 
over  Italy  and  Greece  collecting  many  ex- 
amples of  classic  art  and  making  casts  from 
a  greater  number.  Many  pupils  came  to 
him  to  study  from  his  casts  and  drawings, 
and  they  were  proud  to  be  known  as  his 
followers.  An  art  statuesque  rather  than 


EARL  Y  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


361 


pictorial  was  the  outcome.  Squarcione 
lives  through  his  pupils,  for  all  authentic 
pictures  by  him  are  lost.  His  great  pupil 

Andrea  Mantegna  (1431-1506)  was  a  pow- 
erful influence  in  Italian  art.  Although  his 
work  reflects  the  teachings  of  Squarcione, 
still  he  did  not  escape  the  powerful  in- 
fluence of  Florence.  Fra  Filippo  and  Paolo 
Uccelo  were  represented  by  examples  of 
their  work  at  Padua.  From  them  he  gained 
much,  and  later  in  life  his  color  was  greatly 
influenced  by  the  Bellinis,  Venetians  of 
whom  we  shall  hear  later.  His  work  is  stat- 
uesque in  character,  and  in  his  earlier  period 
is  very  sharp  and  hard  in  its  figures,  while 
the  drapery  is  very  liney. 

The  most  important  pictures  of  this  period 
were  painted  in  the  chapel  of  St.  Christo- 
pher in  the  Eremitani  in  Padua.  Squar- 
cione regarded  Mantegna  as  his  favorite; 
but  about  this  time  Mantegna  married  the 
daughter  of  Jacopo  Bellini,  the  rival  of 
Squarcione.  Squarcione  gave  vent  to  his 
rage  in  harsh  criticism  of  Mantegna's  work, 
saying  that  it  was  lifeless,  that  it  was  like 
marble,  etc.,  and  that  the  figures  should 
have  been  painted  in  white  rather  than  in 
color,  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Montegna 
had  simply  followed  his  teaching.  Man- 
tegna saw  the  justice  of  the  criticism  in  spite 
of  the  malignity  which  prompted  it,  and 
diligently  set  to  work  to  study  nature,  in- 
stead of  relying  simply  on  the  antique.  He 
now  furthermore  imitated  the  color  of  the 
Bellinis,  and  his  next  picture  silenced  the 
violent  criticism  of  his  former  teacher. 

In  composition  Mantegna  was  a  master, 
and  the  effect  of  depth  of  space  he  probably 
felt  before  any  of  his  time.  His  skies,  for 
instance,  give  the  feeling  of  a  wonderful 
depth  and  distance.  His  figures  are  dis- 
tinguished by  a  feeling  of  nobility,  and  his 
invention  and  imagination  were  never  sur- 
passed in  his  time.  One  of  his  frescoes  in 
Mantua  is  remarkable  as  being  the  oldest 
example  of  ceiling  painting  intended  to 
deceive  the  eye.  The  ceiling  appears  open 
to  the  sky  in  the  center.  A  circular  balus- 
trade marks  the  line  of  sky,  and  people  look 
across  to  each  other.  This  innovation  was 
taken  up  later  by  Correggio. 

Although  some  of  Mantegna's  earlier  pic- 


tures are  hard  and  coarse  in  the  figures,  we 
find  in  his  later  works  graceful  lines  and 
soft,  delicate  modeling.  The  nude  figure  of 
the  Venus  and  the  forms  of  the  dancing 
Muses  of  the  Parnassus  in  the  Louvre  are 
as  ideally  beautiful  as  Greek  statues,  and 
still  full  of  the  realism  of  living  nature.  So 
also  does  soft  flesh  replace  hard  marble  in 
the  celebrated  Madonna  della  Vittoria,  in 
the  Louvre.  Here,  too,  we  can  see  what  a 
realist  Mantegna  was,  although  such  a  stu- 
dent of  the  antique.  The  sheen  of  armor, 
the  softness  of  hair,  the  clinging  folds  of 
drapery  show  how  much  his  determined 
study  of  nature  had  done  in  that  direction. 
The  cartoons  in  Hampton  Court  are  full  of 
life,  movement  and  action.  Although  the 
figures  in  these  cartoons  are  based  on 
antique  statues,  they  are  not  the  immovable 
effigies  of  David,  the  French  painter,  who 
also  based  his  art  on  the  antique. 

The  altar-piece  in  the  Church  of  S.  Zeno, 
Verona,  is  one  of  Mantegna's  finest  panel 
pictures  in  Italy.  The  saints  on  either  side 
of  the  Virgin  are  grand  in  form,  without 
stiffness,  and  are  superbly  draped.  The 
Crucifixion,  a  smaller  panel  belonging  to  a 
lower  series  in  this  same  altar-piece,  but 
now  in  the  Louvre,  having  been  stolen  by 
the  French,  is  a  tremendous  composition. 
Intensely  dramatic,  yet  entirely  dignified,  it 
is  worthy  of  the  master,  who,  although 
sometimes  extreme,  still  appeals  to  us  in 
works  which  always  make  one  feel  their 
power.  (See  the  cut,  p.  363.) 

Mantegna  was  one  of  the  first  to  practice 
engraving  on  copper.  He  is  the  first  painter 
to  have  engraved  his  own  designs,  and  the 
extent  of  his  influence  is  in  no  small  degree 
due  to  the  fact  that  his  designs  were  widely 
spread  by  means  of  engraving.  Mantegna 
is  a  grand  witness  to  the  fact  that  an  inti- 
mate understanding  and  study  of  nature 
are  the  essentials  to  progress  and  a  living 
art. 

Except  Mantegna,  whose  influence  was 
marked,  it  is  a  strange  fact  that  none  of 
Squarcione's  pupils  had  any  influence. 
Marco  Zoppo  (1445-1498)  was  considered  the 
best,  but  he  carried  the  peculiarities  of  the 
school  to  exaggeration.  Coarseness  of  fig- 
ures, heavy,  badly  arranged  drapery,  and  an 


362 


PAINTING: 


insistence  on  detail  make  his  work  unpleas- 
ant in  character. 

Except  in  the  very  beginning,  the  School 
of  Verona  really  belongs  in  its  tendencies  to 
the  Venetian.  Vittore  Pisano  (1380-1456) 
was  its  earliest  celebrated  artist.  He 
worked  with  Gentile  da  Fabrino  in  the 
Ducal  Palace  at  Venice,  and  his  style  seems 
to  have  been  influenced  by  him.  Liberale 
da  Verona  (1451-1536?)  was  first  a  minia- 
turist, but  later  he  painted  in  a  larger  style, 
following  Mantegna  in  the  treatment  of  the 
figure.  In  his  coloring  and  treatment  of 
background  and  light  and  shade,  a  Venetian 
influence  is  to  be  discerned  in  his  work. 

Francesco  Bonsignori  (1455-1519)  was  also 
under  Mantegna's  influence.  A  strong 
portraitist,  he  charms  rather  by  his  excel- 
lent rendering  of  individuality  and  charac- 
ter than  by  his  technique,  which  is  rather 
hard  and  coarse.  Besides  being  a  portrait 
painter,  he  was  also  strong  in  historical  sub- 
jects and  in  the  drawing  of  animal  and 
architectural  forms. 

In  the  School  of  Vicenza  there  was  only 
one  master  in  the  time  of  the  Early  Renais- 
sance whom  we  need  consider:  Bartolom- 
meo  Montagna  (1450?- 15 23)  has  had  the 
misfortune  to  have  nearly  all  his  works 
ascribed  to  other  masters,  but  now  the 
critics  are  adding  one  honor  after  another 
to  his  name.  Like  the  other  painters  of 
these  schools,  he  shows  the  influence  of 
Mantegna,  but  coupled  with  some  of  the 
Venetian  feeling  for  color  and  light  and 
shade.  A  painter  of  much  grandeur,  he 
expressed  himself  through  the  medium  of 
both  oils  and  fresco. 


THE  VENETIAN    SCHOOL. (24) 
We    have    seen   how  the   different 
schools  have  developed  on  separate 
lines,  the  Florentine  emphasizing 
nature  study  and  line;  the  Umbrian,  senti- 
ment ;  and  the  Paduan  adding  the  corrective 
element  of  classic  idealism   and  laws  of  pro- 
portion.    The   Venetian    school   added   the 
final  glory — color,  which  is  to  painting  what 
the  blood  is  to  a  finely  formed  cheek.     Why 
the  Venetians  should  have  had  so  much  bet- 


ter sense  of  color  than  the  other  Italians  is 
a  question  which  has  been  a  matter  for  spec- 
ulation to  many.  The  wonderfully  colored 
skies  and  water  of  Venice  are  given  as  one 
cause,  and  her  commerce  with  the  eastern 
nations,  always  lovers  of  fine  color,  as 
another.  Both  probably  contributed  to  the 
result.  In  the  latter  case,  especially,  the 
influence  of  the  richly  and  harmoniously 
colored  draperies  and  rugs  of  the  East  must 
have  educated  and  developed  the  eye  to  the 
appreciation  and  love  of  color.  Color  is 
more  sensuous  and  perhaps  less  a  matter  of 
the  intellect  than  either  line  or  form.  The 
Venetians,  wealthy  and  luxurious,  loved 
magnificence  and  richness  in  the  decora- 
tions with  which  they  surrounded  them- 
selves. Nowhere  else  has  color  rung  with 
nobler,*  richer,  more  majestic  harmonies. 

There  were  two  families  of  artists  in  Ven- 
ice with  whom  the  Venetian  painting  of  the 
Early  Renaissance  begins.  Of  these  two 
the  Vivarinis  formed  what  is  called  the 
Muranese  School,  the  name  being  derived 
from  the  outlying  Venetian  island,  Murano, 
where  they  lived  and  worked.  This  Mur- 
anese School  shows  a  Paduan  influence,  but 
Gentile  da  Fabrino,  the  transition  painter 
of  the  Siennese  school,  undoubtedly  also 
influenced  it  during  his  stay  in  Venice  about 
1420.  There  were  three  of  these  Vivarini. 
The  two  earlier,  Antonio  and  Bartolommeo 
Vivarini,  worked  with  Johannes  Alemanus, 
a  painter  of  supposed  German  birth  and 
training. 

Antonio  Vivarini  ( — ?-i4yo)  painted  in  a 
peculiarly  soft  manner.  His  younger 
brother  or  near  relative,  Bartolommeo 
Vivarini  (1450-1499),  is  more  Paduan  in 
character,  with  more  severity  and  sharpness 
showing  in  his  earlier  work.  In  him,  how- 
ever, we  find  the  first  indication  of  the  true 
Venetian  color,  and,  moreover,  a  certain 
grandeur  of  figures.  Bartolommeo  was  the 
best  of  the  family. 

Luigi  Vivarini  (fl.  1461-1503)  was  the 
youngest  of  the  family.  His  works  are  to 
some  extent  similar  to  those  of  Bartolom- 
meo. The  Paduan  hardness  in  the  render- 
ing of  drapery  and  faces  is  evident;  but 
sometimes,  in  the  same  picture,  one  may 
observe  more  grace  and  softness  in  some  of 


ALTAR-PIECK   IN   THE   CHURCH    OF    S.    ZENO,    VERONA.       A.     MANTEGNA. 

Madonna  and  Child  with  attending  Saints. 
The  Agony.  The  Crucifixion.  The  Resurrection. 


EARL  Y  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


365 


the  faces,  especially  in  those  of  the  Madon- 
nas. His  drawing  is  always  good.  After 
Luigi  Vivarini  the  Muranese  school  seems 
to  merge  into  the  Venetian  school  proper, 
with  the  exception  of  some  pupils  and  fol- 
lowers. Of  these 

Carlo  Crivelli  (1468-1495)  was  the  only 
one  of  prominence.  His  work  shows  a  mix- 
ture of  many  styles.  Gold  embossing  and 
richly  bejeweled  ornamentation  suggestive 
of  Byzantine  art,  and  minute  architectural 
detail  suggestive  of  classic  patterns,  are 
commingled  with  drawing  of  Paduan  hard- 
ness and  a  coloring  peculiarly  transparent 
and  beautiful.  In  characterization  he  is 
equally  varied.  Scowling,  villainous-look- 
ing popes  are  placed  side  by  side  with 
Madonnas  that  are  rendered  with  consider- 
able feeling  and  sentiment. 

Venetian  art  pure  and  simple  dates  from 
the  Bellinis.  Jacopo  Bellini  (i4oo?-i464?), 
the  father,  was  a  pupil  of  Gentile  da  Fab- 
rino.  A  sketch-book  of  his  has  been  re- 
cently discovered,  and  is  now  in  the  Louvre. 
It  shows  him  to  have  been  a  close  student 
of  the  antique,  of  perspective,  and  of  na- 
ture. His  son, 

Gentile  Bellini  (i426?-i5o7),  is  of  great 
interest  in  his  treatment  of  Venetian  sub- 
jects. These  usually  have  a  background  of 
Venetian  architecture  against  which  he 
paints  processions  and  masses  of  people  clad 
in  rich  costumes.  Richly  and  warmly  col- 
ored, with  good  light  and  shade  and  atmos- 
pheric effects,  they  show  a  strong  feeling 
for  the  out-of-doors. 

Giovanni  Bellini  (1428-1516)  was  the 
youngest  of  the  family  and  the  greatest. 
The  brother-in-law  of  Mantegna,  he  was  in- 
fluenced by  him,  and  his  earlier  work  is 
hardly  distinguishable  from  Mantegna's. 
There  is  a  steady  progress  observable  in 
Bellini's  work,  his  best  works  being  his 
latest.  The  richness  and  glow  of  Venetian 
color  comes  out  almost  to  the  full  in  him,  a 
possibility  brought  to  fruition  by  the  intro- 
duction of  the  Flemish  method  of  oil  paint- 
ing by  Antonello  da  Messina,  of  whom  we 
shall  hear  later.  It  was  impossible  to  get 
such  glow  and  glory  by  the  old  method  of 
tempera.  To  be  sure,  oils  had  been  used 
before,  but  in  such  a  way  that  the  paints 


would  hardly  dry,  and  there  was  great  diffi- 
culty in  manipulating  the  medium.  Van 
Eyck's  discovery  did  away  with  these  ob- 
stacles; and  Giovanni,  having  mastered  its 
results  from  Antonello  da  Messina,  devel- 
oped by  their  aid  his  beautiful  color-har- 
monies, which  are  flooded  with  a  golden 
light.  The  grandeur  and  sweep  of  Floren- 
tine line  Giovanni  Bellini  did  not  know;  but 
he  is  one  of  the  first  to  make  the  disposition 
of  light  and  shade  an  essential  part  of  com- 
position, and  he  surpassed  all  his  contem- 


MADONNA   AND   CHILD.      G.    BELLINI. 

poraries   in   technical   skill    and   color-har- 
mony. 

Giovanni's  subjects  are  mostly  religious, 
and  his  pictures  of  this  character  are  per- 
vaded by  a  harmonious  dignity  and  sweet- 
ness. His  sacred  characters  are  not  marked 
by  any  great  religious  feeling;  but  they  are 
grand,  even  majestic  in  their  nobly  con- 
ceived humanity.  Not  in  any  particular 
way  ideal,  they  are  beautiful  through  their 
serene  dignity.  As  a  portrait  painter 
Giovanni  Bellini  was  very  strong  There 
is  a  decided  Flemish  quality  in  his  portrai- 


PAINTING: 


ture  in  the  close  rendering  of  individual 
traits  and  the  careful  following  of  line. 
Antonello  da  Messina  must  evidently  have 
influenced  him  in  portraiture,  as  he  in  turn 
influenced  Antonello. 

His  Virgin  and  Child  Enthroned  with 
Saints,  in  the  Church  of  the  Frari  at  Venice, 
is  by  many  considered  his  masterpiece.  The 
two  little  boy  angels  playing  on  instruments 
here  are  worthy  of  the  High  Renaissance, 
in  their  expressive  strenuousness  of  atti- 
tude. The  Madonna  and  Child,  in  the 
Academy  of  Fine  Arts  in  Venice,  is  a  beau- 
tiful rendering  of  fine,  serious  motherhood. 
The  Christ  child  is  a  true  child,  but  for  all 
that  carries  a  feeling  of  something  higher 
than  the  ordinary.  Giovanni  Bellini  was 
the  true  founder  of  Venetian  painting,  and 
among  his  many  pupils  are  the  great  Gior- 
gione  and  Titian. 

Carpaccio  ( — ?-i522?)  was  a  younger  con- 
temporary of  the  Bellinis,  and  was  influ- 
enced by  both  Gentile  and  Giovanni.  He 
delighted  in  painting  legends  and  poetic 
tales,  which  he  rendered  in  a  peculiarly 
quaint,  interesting  manner.  His  characters 
are  mostly  homely,  but  of  a  very  earnest 
mien.  With  his  rendering  of  architectural 
backgrounds,  and  the  out-door  feeling  he 
gets  into  his  pictures,  he  is  interesting  in 
spite  of  occasional  awkward  passages  of 
drawing.  His  Presentation  at  the  Temple 
is  fine  in  movement  and  feeling,  in  spite  of 
a  decidedly  formal  composition.  Here  we 
find  again  little  angels  playing  instruments, 
which  became  so  prevalent  after  Bellini,  and 
one  of  them  possesses  the  same  beautiful 
earnestness  and  strenuousness  that  marked 
Bellini's  two  angels  in  the  Frari  altar-piece. 


Cima  da  Conegliano  (i46o?-i5i7?)  was  the 

best  of  Giovanni  Bellini's  immediate  fol- 
lowers. He  painted  religious  works  en- 
tirely. His  work  is  strong  in  color,  in  light 
and  shade,  and  in  atmosphere,  and  his  land- 
scape backgrounds  rival  those  of  Giovanni 
himself.  His  work  is  of  great  finish  in 
detail,  but  still  it  carries  in  mass.  Of  Bel- 
lini's other  followers, 

Catena  ( — ?-i53i)  had  a  great  reputation 
in  his  day,  but  it  was  due  more  to  elab- 
orate finish  than  to  any  original  merit. 
Other  followers  are,  Andrea  Previtali 
(i48o?-i525?),  Pier  Francesco  Bissolo  (1464- 
1528),  and  Giovanni  Mansuetti  (1450?- 

-?)• 

Antonello  da  Messina  (1445 7-1493)  *s  fa- 
mous especially  for  introducing  the  Flemish 
method  of  oil  painting  (or  rather  varnish 
painting)  into  Italy.  He  was  born  in  Sicily, 
but  properly  should  be  classed  with  the 
Venetians.  The  story  that  he  went  to  Flan- 
ders to  learn  the  secret  of  Van  Eyck*s  oil- 
painting  seems  without  foundation.  It  is 
more  likely  that  he  learned  the  process  from 
Flemish  painters  in  Italy.  His  early  work 
is  of  a  very  precise  and  Flemish  character, 
but  later  he  came  under  the  influence  of  the 
Bellinis,  and  his  work  became  fuller  in 
character.  There  is  nothing  elevated  about 
Antonello's  work,  but  his  light  and  shade 
is  excellent,  and  in  portraiture  he  is  fine. 
In  fact,  as  suggested  before,  his  influence 
on  Giovanni  Bellini  made  possible  the 
strong,  exact  and  finely  rendered  portrai- 
ture of  that  master.  Antonello's  introduc- 
tion of  oil  painting  completed  the  list  of 
achievements  which  made  possible  the 
glorious  art  of  the  High  Renaissance. 


MOXA   LISA.      LEOXAKDO   DA   VIXCI.      {SEE   PAGE   372.) 


t     Bourse 
tt 


IN  THEIIL  HISTORY 

PRINCIPLES 


EDITOR,  »IH  *  CHIEF 

EDMUND  BUO(LEY1A.M.,PIi.D.,Universityofaiicago 

CONSULTING  EDITORS 

J.  M  .HOPPIN,D.DM  Yale  University 

ALFRED  V.  CHURCHILL  ,A.M.,  ColumbiaUnivcwity 


fli/fy   Illustrated 


NATIONAL    ART    SOCIETY 

Chicago 


Copyright,  1907,  by  W.  E.  ERNST. 


CREATION    OF    MAN.       MICHELANGELO.       (SEE    PAGE    378.) 


Painting:     The   High    Renaissance   in   Italy. 
The  Renaissance  in  Other  Countries. 


BY 


OLAF  M.  BRAUNER. 


ASSISTANT    PROFESSOR    OF    DRAWING    AND    MODELING,    CORNELL    UNIVERSITY. 

' 


I 


NTRODUCTION.  FLORENTINE 
AND  ROMAN  SCHOOLS:  DA 
VINCI,  (i) 


The  art  of  a  nation  passes  through 
very  much  the  same  development  as  that  of 
an  individual.  There  are  the  first  crude 
efforts,  and  then  the  struggle  with  technical 
difficulties.  The  delirious  pleasure  of  over- 
coming the  latter,  then,  very  often  makes 
one  forget  the  end  for  the  means,  and  one 
falls  in  love  with  the  language  itself  rather 
than  with  the  things  to  be  expressed.  Ever 
increasing  power  of  observation  and  per- 
ception also  captivates,  and  the  result  is 
often  mere  transcription  from  nature. 
There  is,  however,  in  this  stage  a  certain 
naive  unconsciousness,  a  simplicity  of 
thought,  which  is  often  lost  in  the  maturity 
of  effort.  It  is  this  unconscious,  nai've, 


sensitive  quality  about  the  Early  Renais- 
sance work  that  makes  it  so  attractive.  But 
technique  in  all  its  branches  had  now  been 
mastered — one  process  by  one  school  or  indi- 
vidual, another  process  by  another  school  or 
individual.  Perspective,  both  linear  and 
aerial,  line,  light  and  shade,  color  and  com- 
position, no  more  offered  any  difficulties. 
One  school  had  developed  in  grandeur  and 
simplicity,  another  in  sentiment,  another  in 
ideal  quality,  and  so  on.  Now  the  giants  of 
painting  came,  and  united  all  these  excel- 
lencies of  quality  and  technical  accomplish- 
ments into  one  great,  perfect  art.  Thus  we 
have  the  period  of  the  High  Renaissance. 

The  introduction  of  oils  had  been  the 
highest  technical  triumph  of  the  Early 
Renaissance,  and  by  its  aid  the  range  of 
painting  was  widened  immeasurably.  The 
art  of  painting  was  to  blossom  into  greater 


369 


370 


PAINTING: 


glory  than  ever  before  in  the  history  of  the 
world;  for  perfect  technique,  beauty  of  line, 
form,  color,  light  and  shade,  were  combined 
with  depth  of  feeling  and  lofty  thought. 

The  Florentine  and  Roman  Schools.  The 
first  master  mind  in  point  of  time  of  this 
new  era  was 

Leonardo  da  Vinci  (1452-1519).  He  was 
one  of  those  rare  beings  upon  whom  nature 
seems  to  shower  every  gift  in  her  power. 
Science,  music,  poetry,  painting,  sculpture, 
architecture  were  all  within  his  power,  and 
he  excelled  in  them  all.  It  is  no  wonder 
that  he  has  been  called  "the  Miracle  of  that 
miraculous  age,  the  Renaissance,"  the  wiz- 
ard, magician,  dreamer,  the  scentist,  realist 
and  idealist  by  different  writers.  So  uni- 
versal a  genius  probably  never  lived  before. 
His  knowledge  was  simply  astonishing  for 
his  time.  Manuscripts  left  by  him  have 
proven  that  he  anticipated  discoveries  in 
science  long  before  the  times  were  ripe  for 
their  acceptance.  He  was  the  greatest 
mathematician,  and  the  most  ingenious 
mechanic  of  his  time;  and  as  chemist  and 
engineer,  he  stood  in  the  front  rank.  When 
we  add  to  this  an  imposing  but  still  mag- 
netic and  winning  personality,  endowed  with 
a  physique  so  strong  that  he  could  easily 
bend  a  horseshoe  with  his  bare  hands,  and 
with  a  body  tall,  straight  and  graceful  and 
crowned  by  a  head  noble  and  beautiful  in 
shape,  we  need  not  wonder  that  Vasari  said 
of  him:  "He  was  perfection  in  all  things." 
His  very  versatility,  his  love  of  experimen- 
tation and  discovery,  proved  the  cause  of  an 
immeasurable  loss  to  art.  His .  energies 
were  directed  in  so  many  channels  that  little 
time  was  left  for  painting;  and  his  passion 
for  experimenting  caused  him  to  use  new 
oils,  varnishes,  and  colors,  that  proved  dis- 
astrous to  his  own  work,  but  of  great  value 
to  his  successors.  There  are  few  works  left 
by  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  and  some  of  his 
grand  conceptions  can  be  but  feebly  guessed 
at  from  his  sketches. 

He  has  been  classed  variously  with  the 
Florentine  and  Milanese  School.  Though 
he  was  Florentine  by  training,  his  greatest 
influence  was  felt  at  Milan;  but  he  was  so 
universal  a  genius  that  it  is  hard  to  class 
him  anywhere. 


His  greatest  gift  to  art  was  the  discovery 
of  the  poetry  of  mystery  in  light  and  shade 
and  the  rendering  of  subtility  of  personality, 
— of  soul.  Light  and  shade  with  him  reaches 
its  highest  perfection,  and  perhaps  no  other 
man  has  been  able  so  well  to  express  the 
inner  spirit  through  the  outward  form.  ' '  He 
had  mastered  the  whole  scale  of  human  ex- 
pression from  the  sublime  and  heavenly  pure 
to  the  depths  of  absurdity  and  corruption." 
This  study  of  expression  was  a  passion  with 
him.  He  always  carried  a  sketch-book,  and 
would  sometimes  follow  people  of  striking 
peculiarity  a  whole  day,  then  corne  home 
and  reproduce  their  features.  He  would 
get  peasants  into  a  room  and  make  them 
laugh,  and  would  even  follow  criminals  to 
execution  for  the  sake  of  studying  their  ex- 
pression. His  knowledge  of  form  was  great, 
for  he  mastered  the  anatomy  of  both  men 
and  animals  to  such  an  extent  that  anato- 
mists of  to-day  can  find  no  fault  with  his 
anatomical  drawings. 

While  Leonardo  da  Vinci  was  still  a  youth 
his  father  sent  him  to  the  studio  of  Andrea 
Verrocchio,  who  was  excellent  in  design 
but  very  poor  in  color.  Leonardo  soon  sur- 
passed his  master  in  painting;  for  the  story 
goes  that  when  Verrocchio  painted  his  Bap- 
tism of  Christ,  he  entrusted  to  Leonardo  the 
painting  of  one  of  the  two  angels  who  form 
part  of  the  composition.  This  task  Leo- 
nardo performed  with  so  much  grace  and 
expression  and  with  such  richness  of  color 
that  Verrocchio  saw  himself  surpassed  and 
ever  after  devoted  himself  solely  to  sculp- 
ture. 

One  of  the  earliest  works  of  Leonardo  was 
a  Medusa  Head  which  still  exists  in  a  Flor- 
entine gallery.  The  head  is  represented  as 
lying  on  the  fragment  of  a  rock,  foreshort- 
ened, the  hair  already  changing  into  scaly 
serpents.  It  is  said  that  as  one  looks  at  this 
"the  ghastly  head  seems  to  expire,  and 
the  serpents  to  crawl  into  glittering  life." 
(See  the  cut,  p.  75.)  But,  at  the  same  time 
that  he  was  doing  this  thing  expressive  of 
horror,  he  showed  his  power  to  express  also 
the  elevated  and  the  graceful,  by  some  car- 
toons of  sacred  and  mythological  subjects. 

When  he  was  thirty  years  old  and  in  the 
prime  of  his  talents,  he  was  invited  by  the 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITALY. 


Duke  of  Milan  to  come  there  and  make  a 
colossal  equestrian  statue  of  one  of  his  an- 
cestors. He  was  engaged  iipon  this  statue 
for  more  than  ten  years,  reading  ancient 
writers,  studying  classic  statuary,  and  mak- 
ing a  close  .study  of  the  movements  of  live 
horses  and  the  anatomy  of  dead  ones.  It 
was  one  of  Leonardo's  strongest  character- 
istics, this  of  taking  infinite  pains  and  of 
never  being  satisfied  with  results.  He 
made  a  vast  number  of  studies  for  this 
statue,  and  many  of  them  are  preserved; 
still  no  one  knows  exactly  how  the  statue 
looked.  When  he  had  finally  finished  the 
clay  model  there  was  no  money  to  cast  it, 


fresco,  and  that  alone  would  have  proved 
disastrous.  But,  furthermore,  floods  have 
twice  inundated  the  room,  the  French  sol- 
diers under  Napoleon  barracked  there  in 
1796,  and  the  French  officers  found  a  source 
of  amusement  in  using  the  heads  as  targets. 
Worst  of  all  the  restorers  have  done  their 
fell  work  time  and  again,  so  that  now  hardly 
anything  of  Leonardo's  own  work  remains 
but  the  general  composition.  One  almost 
wishes  that  Francis  I.  had  succeeded  in  his 
attempt  to  remove  the  picture  to  France. 
Mutilated  as  the  picture  is,  however,  the 
masterful  character  of  the  composition  is 
still  apparent.  Theie  were  certain  diffi- 


kl 


THE   LAST    SUPPER.       LEONARDO    DA    VINCI.        (FROM    AN    EARLY    COPY.) 


and  twenty  years  later  it  had  entirely  disap- 
peared. 

It  was  in  Milan  and  for  this  same  Duke 
Ludovicothat  Leonardo  da  Vinci  painted  the 
wonderful  and  justly  famous  Last  Supper, 
a  picture  perhaps  better  known  than  any 
other  in  the  world,  and  certainly  the 
grandest  one  ever  conceived  up  to  his 
time.  This  masterpiece  was  executed  in  the 
short  space  of  two  years.  It  was  painted  on 
the  wall  of  the  refectory  or  dining  room  of 
the  Dominican  Convent  of  Santa  Maria 
della  Grazie.  Perhaps  to  no  other  master- 
piece has  time  been  so  unkind.  In  the  first 
place,  Leonardo  painted  in  oils  instead  of 


culties  imposed  by  tradition,  for  instance  the 
long  table  behind  which  Christ  and  the 
apostles  must  sit.  The  monks  themselves 
at  their  meals  were  seated  in  exactly  the 
same  way  facing  the  picture.  But  how 
gloriously  Leonardo  has  met  the  difficulties  ! 
What  interesting  rhythm  in  the  groups  of 
three  disposed  on  either  side  of  Christ! 
What  an  expressive  line  runs  through  the 
picture,  what  perfect  balance  without  rigid- 
ity of  symmetry;  how  beautifully  one  head 
and  figure  is  relieved  against  another;  what 
a  master  stroke  to  lean  the  head  of  Judas 
forward  so  as  to  throw  it  into  shadow,  thus 
making  it  all  the  more  sinister!  Then,  last 


372 


PAINTING: 


of  all,  how  daring  to  put  a  window  right 
back  of  the  head  of  Christ,  where  it  might 
so  easily  have  detracted  from  it;  but  how 
well  the  head  holds  and  centers  the  attention 
by  the  aid  of  that  very  window!  Then, -how 
expressive  the  attitude-s  and  what  a  variety ! 
How  charged  the  whole  group  seems  with 
the  intensely  felt  moment !  Leonardo  left  the 
head  of  Christ  uncompleted.  His  ideals  were 
too  high,  and  he  could  not  satisfy  them ;  but 
he  has  left  a  study,  a  mere  sketch  in  pastel, 
now  in  the  Pinacoteca  at  Milan.  Slight  as 
the  sketch  is,  it  is  the  most  wonderful  head 


HEAD    OF    CHRIST.       LEONARDO    DA   VINCI. 


in  art.  No  Christ  head  has  ever  reached  its 
height,  so  charged  is  it  with  depth  of  mean- 
ing and  spirit.  No  description  of  Christ 
could  tell  so  much  as  does  that  pastel  sketch. 
Where  have  strength  and  meekness,  power 
and  gentleness,  sorrow  and  resignation  ever 
been  so  wonderfully  blended  in  one  face? 
In  all  the  range  of  art  there  is  nothing  like 
it.  Sketches  also  remain  of  the  heads  of  the 
apostles,  sketches  all  the  more  precious  be- 
cause the  picture  has  been  so  repainted  and 
repainted.  Every  one  of  them  individual, 
but  only  the  larger  qualities  searched  out. 


All  varieties  of  emotion  are  there;  how 
headlong,  Peter;  how  gentle,  John;  how 
mean  and  crabbed,  Judas!  He  is  indeed  a 
towering  genius  who  could  charge  a  picture 
so  full  of  interest,  emotion,  and  variety,  but 
still  hold  it  all  in  hand,  and  make  it  all  a 
unit  with  a  forceful  climax. 

While  at  Milan  Leonardo  da  Vinci  was  a 
powerful  influence  in  the  Milanese  School. 
He  established  an  art  academy  there,  and 
some  of  the  notes  written  for  lectures  which 
he  delivered  are  still  preserved.  It  is  he- 
cause  his  activity  centered  so  largely  in 
Milan  and  because  of  his  strong  influence 
on  the  Milanese  painters  that  Leonardo  has 
been  classed  with  the  School  of  Milan. 

Of  the  few  Madonna  pictures  by  Leonardo 
da  Vinci,  the  Madonna  of  the  Rocks,  in  the 
Louvre,  is  the  most  famous.  It  is  a  picture 
full  of  the  depth  of  shadow  and  the  glimmer 
of  lights  that  are  so  characteristic  of  Leo- 
nardo. The  indefinable  smile,  which  Leo- 
nardo alone  could  paint,  lingers  over  the 
mouth  of  the  Virgin. 

As  might  be  expected  from  one  so  keen  in 
the  study  of  expression,  one  so  able  to  seize 
on  the  individual,  we  find  Leonardo  da 
Vinci  one  of  the  greatest  portrait  painters. 
His  masterpiece  in  portraiture  is  the  Mona 
Lisa,  that  portrait  of  all  portraits.  What  a 
beautiful,  easy,  unaffected  pose!  What 
caress  of  light,  and  softness  of  shadow! 
What  searching,  well-felt  drawing  and  ex- 
quisite modeling!  Every  plane  of  the  face 
is  felt,  but  how  wonderfully  gentle  the 
transition  from  one  to  another!  Then, 
above  all,  what  a  living  presence  is  there! 
The  very  innermost  spirit  is  in  the  eyes, 
and  the  wonderful  smile  which  tells  so  much 
and  so  little,  hovers  over  the  mouth.  (See 
the  full  page  cut,  p.  368.) 

In  1514  Leonardo  da  Vinci  went  to  Rome 
on  the  invitation  of  Leo  X.,  but  more  in  the 
character  of  philosopher,  mechanic,  and 
alchemist  than  as  painter.  Raphael  was  at 
that  time  painting  his  frescoes  in  the  Vati- 
can; and  with  his  innate  courtesy  and  gen- 
tleness, he  received  the  venerable  master 
with  all  marks  of  respect.  Even  Leonardo 
showed  the  influence  of  the  wonderful 
young  genius  in  the  only  two  pictures  he 
painted  while  in  Rome.  But  he  felt  he  was 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


373 


set  aside  at  Rome,  he  who  had  been  the 
foremost.  Michelangelo  slighted  him,  and 
that  galled  him.  So  he  decided  to  go  to 
France  where  he  was  sure  of  a  welcome. 
He  was  received  by  Francis  I.  with  every 
mark  of  respect,  was  loaded  with  favors,  had 
a  pension  of  seven  hundred  golden  crowns 
settled  on  him  for  life,  and  was  attached  to 
the  court  as  principal  painter.  He  lived 
like  a  prince  in  the  castle  given  him,  and 
received  from  all  the  reverence  and  homage 
due  his  wonderful  genius.  He  died  in 
France  in  1519. 


F 


LORENTINE  AND  ROMAN 
SCHOOLS:  FRA  BARTOLOM- 
MEO,  ALBERT1NELLI,  DEL 
SARTO,  AND  OTHERS.  (2) 


Although  the  Florentines  loved  line  and 
intellectual  conception  more  than  the  more 
sensuous  qualities  of  color,  there  were  some 
of  them  who  combined  both  elements.  One 
who  did  this  in  a  most  remarkable  way  was 

Fra  Bartolommeo  (1475-1517).  He  was  a 
pupil  of  Cosimo  Roselli,  and  learned  the 
technique  of  colors  from  Leonardo  da  Vinci. 
While  young  he  came  under  the  influence  of 
Savonarola,  and  one  of  the  first  things  he 
did  was  a  portrait  of  the  homely  but  strong 
and  powerful  head  of  that  genius.  Many  of 
Fra  Bartolommeo's  works  have  been  lost 
through  the  fanatical  zeal  of  Savonarola; 
for  in  1497  he  induced  a  good  many  artists 
to  burn  all  of  their  pictures  into  which  any 
nude  figure  had  been  introduced,  or  which 
did  not  happen  to  have  a  religious  subject. 
Fra  Bartolommeo  was  one  of  the  first  to 
carry  out  Savonarola's  wishes.  The  martyr- 
dom of  Savonarola  was  such  a  great  shock 
to  Baccio,  as  our  painter  was  then  called, 
that  he  joined  the  monastery  of  S.  Marco, 
and  did  not  touch  the  brush  again  for  six 
years,  when  his  friends  at  last  prevailed 
upon  him  to  resume  it. 

Fra  Bartolommeo  had  that  mark  of  a 
great  painter  in  his  work,  the  union  of  fine 
technique  (color,  drawing  and  composition) 
with  deep  sentiment  and  feeling.  His  fine 
color  may  be  attributed  to  his  visit  to 
Venice,  where  he  stiidied  the  glowing  har- 


monies of  the  Venetians.  In  light  and 
shade,  he  was  directly  influenced,  as  were 
so  many  of  his  time,  by  Leonardo  da  Vinci. 
He  was  opposed  to  the  sensuous  on  prin- 
ciple, but  there  is  a  good  deal  of  it  in  his  fine 
light  and  shade  and  in  the  expressive  beauty 
of  his  faces.  He  was  opposed  to  painting 
the  nude,  but  that  he  was  a  master  of  the 
human  form  he  proved  by  the  only  nude  he 
ever  painted,  a  St.  Sebastian.  This  was  so 
beautiful  in  form  and  line  and  color,  and  so 
fine  in  its  modeling  and  life,  that  people 
forgot  the  suffering  of  the  saint  for  the 
beauty  of  his  form,  with  the  result  that  the 
prior  had  to  have  the  picture  removed. 

One  of  his  greatest  pictures  is  the  Deposi- 
tion from  the  Cross,  in  the  Pitti  Gallery.  This 
is  composed  on  the  pyramidal  principle,  a 
form  of  composition  found  in  all  Fra  Bar- 
tolommeo's works.  The  lines  marking  the 
masses  of  drapery  are  beautiful  in  flow  and 
disposition,  and  the  light  and  shade  comes 
up  to  Leonardo  da  Vinci's  in  beauty.  There 
is  a  true  dramatic  breadth  about  this  picture, 
but  it  is  repressed,  held  within  bounds.  (See 
cut,  page  374.)  Mantegna,  for  instance,  goes 
beyond  artistic  dignity,  when  in.  his  Burial  of 
Christ  he  makes  John  scream  out  aloud  in  his 
grief.  In  Fra  Bartolommeo's  picture  the  deep, 
silent,  tearless,  unutterable  grief  of  St.  John 
is  far  truer  to  the  dignity  and  pathos  of  the 
moment.  Fra  Bartolommeo  was  great  by 
his  pure  painter-like  qualities,  but  with  it  he 
had  a  depth  of  sentiment  and  fervor  of  re- 
ligious feeling  that  mark  him  above  all 
others  of  his  time. 

Mariotto  Albertinelli  (1465-1520).  There 
was  a  close  friendship  between  Albertinelli 
and  Fra  Bartolommeo,  a  friendship  which 
lasted  for  life.  They  worked  in  partnership 
and  often  painted  together  on  the  same  pic- 
ture. In  such  cases  it  is  almost  impossible 
to  tell  their  work  apart.  Albertinelli  lacked 
the  religious  devotion  of  Fra  Bartolommeo, 
but  that  he  painted  religious  pictures  with 
feeling  can  be  seen  from  his  masterpiece, 
The  Salutation,  in  the  Uffizi,  a  picture  of 
much  tender  sweetness. 

Among  the  followers  of  Fra  Bartolommeo 
and  Albertinelli  were  Fra  Paolo  da  Pistoja 
(1490-1547),  Bugiardini  (1475-1554),  Qra- 
nacci  (1477-1543),  and  Ridolfo  Qhirlandajo 


374 


PAINTING: 


DEPOSITION    FROM    THE    CROSS.       FRA    BARTOLOMMEO. 


(1483-1561).  Paolo  inherited  Fra  Bartolom- 
meo's  drawings,  and  made  use  of  them  for 
his -own  pictures,  which  are  for  that  reason 
always  good  in  design;  but  he  did  not  have 
Fra  Bartulommeo's  mellowness  of  color,  his 
being  rather  harsh  and  crude.  His  best 
work  is  a  Crucifixion,  at  Sienna;  a  picture 
which  has  been  attributed  also  to  Fra  Bar- 
tolommeo,  but  which  has  faults  and  hard- 
ness of  drawing  not  at  all  characteristic  of 
that  master. 

Bugiardini  was  an  assistant  rather  than 
scholar  of  Albertinelli.  In  the  shop  of 
Ghirlandajo  he  met  Michelangelo,  who 
afterwards  employed  him  as  an  assistant  in 
the  Sistine  Chapel.  Bugiardini  had  no 
original  force,  but  imitated  any  master  with 
whom  he  might  happen  to  be  in  contact. 

This  was  also  true  to  a  great  extent  of 
Granacci.  who  shows  the  influence  of  many 
masters  in  his  work. 


Ridolfo  Ghirlandajo,  the  son  of  Domenico 
Ghirlandajo,  was  one  of  Fra  Bartolommeo's 
principal  followers.  His  two  masterpieces 
are  the  S.  Zenobio  Restoring  a  Dead  Child 
to  Life,  and  the  Funeral  Procession  of  the 
Saint.  Here  he  rivals  the  rich  coloring  and 
deep  relief  of  Fra  Bartolommeo,  and  the 
animation  and  expression  of  Andrea  del 
Sarto. 

Andrea  del  Sarto  (1486-1531)  was  called 
the  faultless  painter  by  his  fellow  towns- 
men, and  this  was  true  so  far  as  technique 
goes.  As  a  colorist  and  handler  of  the 
brush  he  went  far  beyond  the  rest  of  the 
Florentines.  His  drawing  was  perfection, 
and  his  mastery  of  light  and  shade  nothing 
short  of  the  marvelous.  His  talent  for 
assimilation  was  great.  He  gained  in  draw- 
ing from  Masaccio  and  Ghirlandajo,  and  in 
line  from  Michelangelo.  Light  and  shade, 
as  might  be  expected,  he  gained  from  Leo- 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


375 


nardo  da  Vinci ;  but  in  the  matter  of  strong, 
interesting-,  masterful  brushwork,  and  in  his 
coloring1,  characterized  by  a  subdued,  though 
rich  and  beautifully  soft  harmony  of  secon- 
daries and  tertiaries  rather  than  the  harsh 
primaries  of  his  fellow  Florentines,  he  stood 
entirely  by  himself.  In  landscape  work 
and  atmospheric  effects  also  he  went  beyond 
the  other  Florentines.  But  with  all  his  fine 
technique  and  wonderful  adaptability,  he 
lacked  that  spark  which,  had  he  possessed 
it,  would  have  lifted  his  work  up  to  the 
height  of  the  four  giants  of  the  art  world. 
It  was  the  times  that  made  Andrea  del 
Sarto  great,  his  talent  rather  than  his 
genius.  Browning  in  his  poem  of  Andrea 
del  Sarto  makes  his  wife  the  principal  cause 
of  his  lack  of  soul,  and  his  pictures  give  the 
appearance  of  truth  to  the  assertion.  All 
his  Madonnas  (and  his  subjects  were  entirely 
religious)  are  of  one  face,  beautiful  in  form, 
the  face  of  his  infamous  wife,  who  was  the 
cause  of  his  dishonor. 

That  Andrea  del  Sarto  was  of  tremendous 
promise  to  his  contemporaries  we  gain  from 
Michelangelo's  remark  to  Ra- 
phael: "There  is  a  little  fellow 
in  Florence  who  will  bring 
sweat  to  your  brow  if  ever  he 
is  engaged  in  great  works."  It 
is  unfair  to  say  that  Andrea  del 
Sarto  entirely  lacks  soul.  His 
St.  John,  in  the  Pitti  Gallery, 
with  its  luminous  depth  of  eye 
refutes  the  charge  somewhat. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  in  the 
same  gallery  is  a  Madonna, 
Child  and  Saints  which  shows 
a  woeful  lack  of  soul  and  feel- 
ing, wonderful  as  it  is  in  the 
modeling  of  form,  the  sweep 
and  beauty  of  line,  the  softness 
of  enveloping  atmosphere,  and 
the  mastery  of  drawing.  The 
Madonna's  face  is  of  a  low  type, 
although  of  a  certain  beauty, 
and  is  decidedly  unpleasant. 

Andrea  del  Sarto  is  perhaps 
the  finest  technician  in  fresco 
that  ever  lived.  In  that  he 
went  beyond  even  Michelan- 
gelo and  Raphael.  He  seemed 


to  be  able  to  make  fresco  do  the  work  of 
oils,  and  he  never  retouched.  His  master- 
piece, the  Madonna  of  the  Sack,  so  called 
from  the  sack  upon  which  St.  Joseph  is  lean- 
ing, is  a  fresco  in  the  Chapel  of  the  Annun- 
ciate at  Florence.  In  a  small,  narrow,  semi- 
circular space,  so  small  that  the  figures  are 
represented  seated  low  down,  he  has  suc- 
ceeded in  placing  a  composition  of  great 
grandeur  and  power,  beautiful  in  balance 
and  sweep  of  line.  The  drapery  is  superb 
in  arrangement,  and  the  Madonna  here"  is 
marked  by  real  dignity  and  even  grandeur. 
The  child  is  also  a  masterful  rendering  of 
lively,  eager,  yet  dignified  childhood.  His 
finest  work  in  oils  is  the  Madonna  of  St. 
Francis,  sometimes  also  called  the  Madonna 
of  the  Harpies.  Andrea  del  Sarto  died  poor 
and  alone;  for  his  wife,  for  whom  he  had 
lost  honor  and  the  respect  of  his  fellows, 
deserted  him  in  his  last  illness.  He  had  a 
large  number  of  pupils  and  followers,  but 
they  deserted  him  later  for  Michelangelo. 
The  two  most  important  are  Pontormo  and 
Franciabigio. 


MADONNA    OF    ST.     FRANCIS.       A.    DEL    SARTO. 


376 


PAINTING: 


Pontormo  (1493-1558)  was  of  great  prom- 
ise, for  Michelangelo  is  reported  to  have 
said  of  him:  "If  this  young  man's  life  is 
spared,  he  will  raise  our  art  to  the  skies. 
But,  alas,  he  did  not  live  up  to  his  promise, 
losing  himself  later  in  life  in  imitation  of 
others.  In  fact,  imitation,  the  death  of  all 
creative  art,  was  almost  inevitable,  for  the 
great  masters  had  already  said  the  last  word 
in  the  art  of  the  time. 

Franciabigio  was  a  pupil  of  Albertinelli, 
and  became  a  co-worker  with  Andrea  del 
Sarto,  by  whom  he  was  greatly  influenced, 
although  Andrea  was  by  several  years  his 
junior.  Franciabigio  painted  some  very 
fine  portraits  in  oils.  His  finest  work  is 
perhaps  the  Marriage  of  the  Virgin,  in  the 
Annunciate  Church  at  Florence.  The 
monks  uncovered  this  work  before  it  was 
finished,  which  so  enraged  the  artist  that  he 
attacked  it  with  hammer  blows.  The  head 
of  the  Virgin  was  entirely  destroyed,  and  it 
has  never  been  restored. 


F 


LORENTINE     AND     ROMAN 
SCHOOLS:    MICHELANGELO.  (3) 


Michelangelo  (1475-1564),  one  of  the 
world's  four  painters,  was  the  most 
majestic  of  them  all.  His  great  word  in  art 
was  power.  He  dealt  in  the  things  that  are 
vast,  titanic,  superhuman.  Everything  he 
did,  everything  he  studied,  was  done  for  the 
strength  in  it.  He  was  the  most  powerful 
creative  genius  that  ever  lived.  He  did  not 
care  for  the  imitation  of  facts;  his  tre- 
mendous thoughts  and  feelings  were  put 
forth  through  forms,  built  on  the  .knowledge 
of  facts,  but  nevertheless  created.  His  fig- 
ures, huge  of  limb  but  not  gross,  mighty  in 
pose  and  gesture  though  not  exaggerated, 
without  human  prototype  still  instinct  with 
life  whether  in  repose  or  in  motion,  impress 
one  with  a  vast,  unexplainable  power,  with 
a  might  like  the  grandeur  of  huge  architec- 
tural creations.  He  himself  was  a  stern, 
rugged,  grand,  unflinching  character,  who 
carried  art  to  its  highest  pinnacle,  and  lived 
long  enough  to  see  the  mighty  impulse, 
which  culminated  in  him,  shatter  and  break 
and  become  mere  imitation  and  mummery 


in  those  that  tried  to  follow  his  vast  flight. 
He  was  more  of  a  sculptor  than  a  painter  in 
that  he  did  not  care  for  the  more  sensuous 
charm  of  color  and  atmosphere;  but  his 
architectural  decorations  gain  all  the  more 
in  that  he  leaves  out  the  matter  of  atmos- 
phere and  consequent  illusion.  In  grandeur 
of  composition  he  is  of  the  best,  and  in  draw- 
ing he  stands  supreme.  Weak  of  body,  his 
inflexible  will  and  temper  account  for  his 
immense  productivity. 

Michelangelo  was  born  near  Florence. 
Of  noble  family,  his  father,  a  poor  man, 
wanted  him  to  adopt  the  profession  of 
notary  public  or  advocate  rather  than  that 
of  artist,  for  which  he  had  great  contempt. 
But  the  spirit  within  the  boy  was  not  to  be 
denied.  He  neglected  his  irksome  studies, 
and  spent  a  great  deal  of  his  time  in  artists', 
studios,  mastering  art  as  best  he  might  by 
himself,  until  Ghirlandajo,  who  saw  the 
wonderful  power  in  the  boy,  pleaded  his 
cause  so  well  that  his  father  at  last  con- 
sented, and  Michelangelo  entered  Ghirlan- 
dajo's  studio  at  fourteen.  Here  Ghirlandajo 
paid  him  a  small  sum  for  his  help  instead  of 
charging  for  tuition  as  was  usually  the  case. 
When  fifteen  Michelangelo  was  selected 
among  other  fortunate  youths  to  study  in 
the  academy  which  Lorenzo  the  Magnificent 
had  established  in  his  garden  under  the 
charge  of  Bartoldo,  the  sculptor.  He 
instantly  caught  Lorenzo's  attention  by  his 
Satyr's  Mask,  and  that  patron  of  art  offered 
to  take  the  young  genius  and  care  for  him. 
With  Lorenzo  Michelangelo  heard  the  con- 
versation of  the  greatest  men  of  the  day,  and 
this  must  have  wonderfully  stimulated  his 
youthful  mind.  His  activity  was  directed 
entirely  to  sculpture  until  1503,  when  he 
entered  into  direct  competition,  if  so  it  can 
be  called,  with  Leonardo  da  Vinci  in  car- 
toons for  the  decoration  of  the  Town  Hall  of 
Florence.  Leonardo  da  Vinci  chose  as  a 
subject  the  defeat  of  the  Milanese  by  the 
Florentines  in  1440.  Here  he  could  intro- 
duce his  great  knowledge  and  study  of  the 
horse.  Michelangelo's  subject  was  a  group 
of  Florentines  surprised  while  bathing  in 
front  of  Pisa,  which  they  were  besieging. 
Powerful  figures  in  all  positions,  some 
naked,  some  half-clothed,  form  the  subject, 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


377 


and  it  gave  Michelangelo  full  chance  to  dis- 
play his  great  knowledge  of  the  human  fig- 
ure. These  two  cartoons  were  never 
executed  in  fresco  on  the  walls;  but  they 
formed  a  school  for  all  the  artists  of  the 
time,  and  their  influence  was  felt  to  a  power- 
ful degree  in  the  development  of  modern 
art.  Both  cartoons  have  perished.  Rubens 
copied  from  Leonardo's  a  group  of  horsemen 
fighting  for  a  standard,  but  he  did  it  in  his 
own  Flemish  manner.  Baccio  Bandinelli,  a 
sculptor  and  rival  of  Michelangelo,  is  said  to 
have  cut  Michelangelo's  cartoons  into  shreds 
in  a  fit  of  jealousy,  but  some  of  the  groups 
are  known  through  old  copies  and  engrav- 
ings. 

In  1506  Pope  Julius  II.  called  Michelan- 
gelo to  Rome.  The  pope  had  a  magnificent 
project  for  his  own  tomb,  and  Michelan- 
gelo was  to  execute  it;  but  it  was  never 
completed.  Bramante,  the  architect,  could 
not  bear  to  see  Michelangelo  in  favor,  and 
often  made  him  suffer  by  his  schemes  arid 
plots.  At  last  he  made  the  pope  believe 
that  to  build  one's  tomb  while  living  was  an 
ill  omen,  and  Michelangelo's  work  was  thus 
brought  to  an  end. 

The  pope  then  commanded  Michelangelo 
to  paint  the  ceiling  of  the  Sistine  Chapel. 
Michelangelo  protested ;  for  he  was  a  sculptor 
and  no  painter,  he  said,  but  his  pleas  were 
unavailing.  He  was  so  diffident  about  his 
power  as  a  painter  that  he  invited  several 
painters  from  Florence  to  assist  him  by 
coloring  the  decorations  from  his  designs. 
But,  as  one  might  expect,  these  painters 
were  unable  to  grasp  the  style  of  the  giant 
mind,  and  in  disgust  Michelangelo  destroyed 
their  work  and  sent  them  away. 

It  is  said  that  he  spent  only  twenty-two 
months  on  this  gigantic  undertaking — the 
ceiling  was  150  feet  long  and  50  feet  wide — 
but  others  estimate  that  it  took  three  or  even 
four  years.  On  the  surface  of  this  ceiling, 
which  is  a  flattened  arch  in  section,  he 
painted  in  all  about  two  hundred  figures, 
some  of  colossal  size.  (See  the  cut,  p,  43.) 

The  center  of  the  ceiling,  which  is  a  flat 
plane,  is  divided  into  nine  compartments, 
four  large  and  five  small.  In  the  large  com- 
partments he  has  represented  the  Creation 
of  Sun  and  Moon,  the  Creation  of  Adam, 


the  Fall,  and  the  Deluge.  In  the  small 
compartments  are  represented  the  Gather- 
ing of  the  Waters,  the  Almighty  Separating 
Light  from  Darkness,  the  Creation  of  Eve, 
the  Sacrifice  of  Noah,  and  the  Drunken- 
ness of  Noah.  In  the  curved  part  are  rep- 
resented, besides  the  genealogy  of  Christ, 
the  colossal  figures  of  sibyls  and  prophets, 
and  in  the  four  corners  are  scenes  represent- 
ing the  miraculous  deliverances  of  Israel. 


DECORATIVE    FIGURE    IN    THK    SISTINE  CHAPEL. 
ANGELO. 


All  these  figures  and  scenes  are  contained 
in  a  well  composed  strong  architectural 
framework.  There  is  not  one  figure  or  por- 
tion in  it  but  has  its  own  interest,  and  yet  it 
is  all  ordered  and  unified  into  one  grand 
whole.  It  took  one  with  the  gifts  of  a  great 
sculptor,  architect  and  painter  to  keep  this 
vast  space,  so  crowded  with  interest,  from 
being  scattered;  but  Michelangelo  had  them 
all,  and  with  well-defined  spaces  and  strong 


PAINTING: 


leading  architectural  lines,  which  emphasize 
each  scene  at  the  same  time  that  they  unite 
them,  he  has  produced  a  decoration  that  is 
one  of  the  marvels  of  the  world  in  its  repose 
in  action. 

The  first  three  compositions,  the  Drunk- 
enness of  Noah,  the  Deluge,  and  the  Sacri- 
fice of  Noah,  are  smaller  of  figure  than  the 
other  compositions.  This  is  especially  true 
of  the  Deluge.  Michelangelo  evidently 
started  at  this  end  of  the  ceiling,  and,  find- 
ing that  the  figures  in  the  Deluge  could 
hardly  be  seen  from  below,  altered  the  scale 
in  the  other  compositions. 

The  triangular  compositions  representing 
the  ancestors  of  Christ  are  interesting  as 
being  gentler  and  tenderer  than  is  Michel- 
angelo's wont.  These  are  really  idyllic 
family  groups,  wherein  some  of  the  female 
figures  are  full  of  grace  and  beauty. 

The  seated  architectural  figures  are  mar- 
velous in  their  variety  of  pose  and  strength, 
and  with  the  sibyls  and  prophets  we  come 
upon  some  of  the  mightiest  figures  known 
to  art. 

But  the  climax  of  all  the  figures  is  reached 
in  the  Adam  of  the  Creation.  (See  the  cut, 
p.  369  )  In  all  art  there  is  nothing  like  it 
save  the  grandly  god-like  figures  of  the 
^Parthenon  pediment.  Mighty  is  the  form  as 
it  lies  stretched  on  the  rirn  of  the  world, 
powerful  and  huge,  but  what  grace  withal 
in  every  supple  line !  Nothing  else  could  be 
worthy  of  the  father  of  a  race.  There  is 
that  about  Michelangelo's  work  which  cre- 
ates a  mood  like  that  one  falls  into  when 
viewing  some  overpowering  scene  of  nature, 
some  mighty  mountain  range  or  grand 
sweep  of  ocean.  It  is  no  wonder  that  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds  said  of  Michelangelo:  "To 
kiss  the  hem  of  his  garment,  to  catch  the 
slightest  of  his  perfections,  would  be  glory 
and  distinction  enough  for  any  ambitious 
man." 

Michelangelo  did  not  paint  again  for 
twenty-two  years,  but  in  1534  Paul  III.  de- 
cided to  have  the  Sistine  Chapel  finished, 
and  Michelangelo,  again  interrupted  in  his 
work  as  a  sculptor,  now  painted  on  the  end 
wall  of  the  chapel  his  Last  Judgment,  a 
picture  sixty  feet  high.  The  composition 
was  part  of  Michelangelo's  scheme,  and  had 


always  been  intended  by  him.  In  mastery 
of  form,  in  power  of  drawing  the  figure  in 
the  most  difficult  positions,  this  work  is 
unrivaled;  but  it  does  not  have  the  well- 
ordered  dignity  of  composition  which  dis- 
tinguishes the  ceiling  decoration.  All  is 
grewsome  despair  in  this  conception.  There 
is  no  ray  of  joy;  even  the  blessed  are 
weighed  down  by  the  doom  of  the  con- 
demned. The  Christ  figure  is  awe-inspiring 
in  its  expression  of  terrible  wrath.  In  this 
composition  Michelangelo  indulged  to  the 
fullest  bent  his  love  for  the  nude  figure,  but 
there  seem  to  have  been  prudes  in  those 
days  as  well  as  now.  Pope  Paul  IV.,  who 
did  not  care  for  art  at  all,  wished  to  have 
the  painting  destroyed;  but  a  compromise 
was  effected  by  having  Daniele  da  Volterra 
paint  draperies  over  some  of  the  most 
"objectionable"  figures,  a  deed  which 
earned  him  the  title  of  breeches-maker. 

The  last  pictures  Michelangelo  executed 
are  the  two  frescoes  in  the  Pauline  Chapel 
of  the  Vatican,  The  Crucifixion  of  St.  Peter 
and  The  Conversion  of  St.  Paul.  These  are 
so  blackened  by  incense  smoke,  and  so  badly 
preserved  generally  that  they  are  rarely  even 
mentioned. 

Michelangelo  did  only  one  easel  picture,  a 
Holy  Family.  It  shows  the  mastery  of 
difficult  posture  and  anatomy,  as  does  all  of 
Michelangelo's  work;  but  it  lacks  the  ten- 
derness and  feeling  that  one  expects  from 
such  a  subject.  The  Fates  and  other  easel 
pictures  given  as  being  Michelangelo's  were 
painted  by  his  pupils  and  followers,  some- 
times from  his  designs,  but  often  in  imita- 
tion of  him. 

Michelangelo  led  his  lonely  and  stern  life 
to  the  last,  a  giant  among  men,  never 
swerving  from  his  purpose,  always  true  to 
himself.  His  path  in  art  was  entirely  orig- 
inal, the  expression  of  a  tremendous  person- 
ality, an  individual  temperament.  It  is  in 
this  intense  individuality  of  temperament 
that  he  is  so  modern,  and  comes  so  near  us 
at  the  present  time.  Grimm  says  of  him: 
"All  Italians  feel  that  he  occupies  the  third 
place  by  the  side  of  Dante  and  Raphael  and 
forms  with  them  a  triumvirate  of  the  great- 
est men  produced  by  their  country, — a  poet, 
a  painter,  and  one  who  was  great  in  all  arts. 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITALY. 


379 


Who  would  place  a  gen- 
eral or  a  statesman  by 
their  side  as  equal  to 
them?  It  is  art  alone 
which  marks  the  prime 
of  nations. " 

Michelangelo's  tre- 
mendous personality 
exerted  a  powerful  in- 
fluence on  all  the  paint- 
ers of  his  time,  even 
the  "divine"  Raphael 
falling  under  his  spell. 
But  the  direct  imitators 
failed  sadly;  for  where 
he  expressed  tremen- 
dous power  and  awe-in- 
spiring grandeur,  they 
would  sink  into  mere 
exaggeration  and  gross- 
ness.  A  few  of  his 
followers,  however, 

showed    some    independence    and    painted 
things  of  some  strength. 


F 


LORENTINE  AND  ROMAN 
SCHOOLS:  VOLTERRA,  VEN- 
USTI,  PIOMBO.(4) 


Daniele  da  Volterra  (1509-1566) 
was  the  strongest  of  them.  His  great  pic- 
ture is  the  Descent  from  the  Cross  in  S. 
Trinita  de  Monte  at  Rome.  Poussin  classed 
it  among  the  three  pictures  of  the  world — 
rather  an  absurd  statement.  The  picture 
is  full  of  action  and  passion,  but  almost  too 
violently  so ;  and  there  is  a  certain  affecta- 
tion in  pose  and  gesture.  It  is  so  much 
better  than  other  pictures  by  Daniele  da 
Volterra,  that  the  design  is  in  part  ascribed 
to  Michelangelo. 

Marcello  Venusti  (1515-1585?)  painted  a 
number  of  pictures  directly  from  Michel- 
angelo's designs.  His  technique  was  smooth 
and  finished,  and  forms  a  peculiar  contrast 
to  the  powerful  designs  of  Michelangelo. 
Certain  characteristics  of  Michelangelo,  for 
instance  the  bended  wrist,  become  an  un- 
pleasant reiteration  in  some  of  his  followers. 
In  the  Holy  Family  (or  Silence)  of  Venusti, 
for  instance,  the  pose  of  the  Virgin's  hand 


MARTYRDOM    OF    SAINT    AGATHA.       PIOMBO. 


is  sprawly  in  fingers,  and  the  pose  of  the 
hand  of  St.  Joseph  and  of  the  Christ 
child  is  decidedly  monotonous  and  tire- 
some. His  copy  of  Michelangelo's  Last 
Judgment,  in  the  Gallery  of  Naples,  was 
made  under  Michelangelo's  own  superin- 
tendence, and  is  of  especial  interest  now 
that  the  original  is  in  such  a  bad  state  of 
preservation. 

Sebastiano  del  Piombo  (1485-1547)  was  an- 
other strong  follower  of  Michelangelo.  Born 
in  Venice  and  trained  under  the  strongest 
painters  there,  he  had  the  fine  color  and 
light  and  shade  qualities  of  the  Venetians. 
These  he  tried  to  unite  with  Florentine 
grandeur  of  line,  after  coming  to  Rome  and 
falling  under  Michelangelo's  influence. 
The  yielding  softness  and  texture  of  flesh  so 
distinctive  of  the  Venetians  was  also  Sebas- 
tiano's,  and  in  that  he  is  much  different 
from  Michelangelo.  The  mastery  of  the 
mystery  of  light  and  'shade  is  also  his,  and 
like  Giorgione,  his  early  master,  he  loves  to 
dwell  on  the  glint  of  light  on  armor  and  its 
glimmer  on  soft  flesh.  It  was  his  ability  to 
render  the  more  sensuous,  the  beauties 
of  nature,  that  gave  rise  to  the  story 
that  Michelangelo  once  designed  a  pic- 
ture for  Sebastiano  to  paint,  so  that  thus 
Raphael  might  be  outdone.  Sebastiano 


38o 


PAINTING: 


was  really  a  wonderful  portrait  painter. 
Here  he  combined  the  color  of  Titian 
with  Michelangelo's  style  of  drawing.  His 
masterpiece  is  supposed  to  be  the  Rais- 
ing of  Lazarus,  in  the  National  Gallery, 
London. 


F 


LORENTINE     AND     ROMAN 
SCHOOLS:  RAPHAEL. (5) 


"Raphael  (1483-1520)  the  Prince  of 
Painters,"  "Raphael  the  Divine" 
are  names  given  again  and  again  to  this  one 
of  the  quartet  of  the  world's  painters. 
"The  harmonist  of  the  Renaissance,"  he  is 
also  called,  and  rightly,  for  his  great  aim 
was  to  produce  a  union  of  all  elements  into 
a  perfect  whole.  For  the  same  reason  he 
was  also  called  the  "Greek  of  the  Renais- 
sance." 

The  passionate  fiery  expression  of  indi- 
viduality by  Michelangelo  is  not  Raphael's. 
He  stands  more  apart  from  his  creations,  he 
views  them  more  critically.  Feeling  is  tem- 
pered by  thought,  by  regard  for  canons  and 
established  laws  of  proportion.  Not  that 
Raphael  is  cold,  for  his  works  are  full  of 
feeling;  but  he  is  more  serenely  calm,  more 
tempered,  more  regardful  of  an  exact  bal- 
ance, rhythm  and  union  of  feeling,  thought, 
form,  proportion  and  expression.  Michel- 
angelo is  subjective  entirely;  Raphael  is 
objective.  With  him  the  personal  element 
is  kept  in  the  background.  The  headlong, 
passionate  working  out  of  a  mood  was  for- 
eign to  Raphael;  he  worked  more  deliber- 
ately, added  one  thing  here,  another  there, 
held  himself  always  in  check,  and  saw  to  it 
that  nothing  had  undue  prominence,  that 
nothing  was  one-sided.  His  figures  are 
grand,  majestic,  serenely  powerful,  but  not 
mighty,  passionate  and  titanic,  like  Michel- 
angelo's. 

He  was  more  of  a  painter  pure  and  simple 
than  Michelangelo.  For  a  Florentine  his 
color  was  good,  his  light  and  shade  had  the 
beauty  of  nature's  mysteries  in  it,  envelope 
also  was  at  his  command,  and  in  drawing 
and  composition  he  was  grand,  forceful. 
For  grace,  lofty  serenity,  purity  and 
beauty  of  line  and  form  he  stands  su- 


preme. It  is  not  that  Raphael  did  all 
things  better  than  any  one  else  that  makes 
him  supreme,  but  it  is  the  wonderfully 
harmonious  union  of  all  excellencies  in  him. 
Titian  had  better  color,  and  far  better 
brush  work,  Michelangelo  greater  power, 
vaster  thoughts,  Leonardo  da  Vinci  per- 
haps more  charm  and  feeling;  but  none 
other  than  Raphael  has  possessed  all  these 
qualities. 

We  should  expect  a  fine  character  and  an 
even  temperament  from  a  man  who  pro- 
duced work  like  that,  and  Raphael  had  both. 
There  was  nothing  crabbed  or  mean  about 
him.  His  spirit  was  true,  sweet  and  whole- 
some, and  he  felt  no  jealousy  of  the  attain- 
ments of  others.  To  all  he  gave  their  due, 
and  he  paid  homage  and  deference  to  paint- 
ers who  were  older  than  he,  but  whose  art 
was  far  below  his  own.  It  has  been 
well  said  of  him,  "Every  grace  of  mind  and 
hand  was  Raphael's."  He  saw  the  good  in 
other  artists'  work,  and  would  assimilate 
from  them,  but  not  imitate.  He  made  their 
various  qualities  his  own;  they  bear  the 
stamp  of  his  individuality. 

In  studying  Raphael's  work  one  finds  that 
it  passes  through  three  distinct  styles.  The 
first  is  the  Peruginesque.  This  manner 
characterized  him  while  he  was  directly 
under  Perugino's  influence  and  for  some 
time  after.  The  second  is  the  Florentine 
manner,  acquired  during  his  visit  to  Flor- 
ence and  while  under  the  influence  of  Fra 
Bartolommeo  and  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  The 
third  is  the  Roman  manner,  which  becomes 
characteristic  of  him  after  his  coming  to 
Rome  and  feeling  the  influence  of  Michel- 
angelo's work.  His  greatest  works  are 
those  of  the  Roman  Period. 

Raphael  was  born  in  the  city  of  Urbino. 
His  father,  Giovanni  Santi,  gave  him  his 
first  training;  but  Giovanni  died  while 
Raphael  was  still  young,  and  his  uncle  de- 
cided to  place  him  with  Perugino,  who  was 
then  at  the  height  of  his  fame.  It  is  said 
that  Perugino  exclaimed  upon  seeing  Ra- 
phael's sketches:  "Let  him  be  my  pupil,  he 
will  soon  become  my  master."  Raphael 
was  less  assertive  than  Michelangelo.  His 
progress  was  gradual  and  there  is  no  indica- 
tion of  the  force  and  strength  and  grandeur 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


381 


of  his  Roman  period  in  his  Marriage  of  the 
Virgin,  the  best -known  picture  of  the  Peru- 
ginesque  period.  There  is  far  more  life 
than  in  Perugino's  work,  greater  beauty  of 
drawing  and  expression;  but  there  is  the 
wistful,  mild  sweetness  of  that  master,  the 
same  slight  affectation  in  tilt  of  head  and  the 
same  lack  of  dramatic  force.  The  young 
man,  for  instance,  breaking  his  rod,  shows 
no  agitation,  no  vigor  of  pose.  There 
is  also  the  same  simple  symmetrical  com- 
position which  distinguishes  Perugino's 
work.  It  is  Perugino's  style  carried  to  per- 
fection. 

It  was  about  this  time  (1504)  that  Raphael 
made  his  first  visit  to  Florence.  Here  he 
became  acquainted  with  Fra  Bartolommeo, 
and  saw  the  cartoons  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci 
and  Michelangelo.  It  was  a  powerful  stim- 
ulus to  Raphael,  and  revealed  to  him  new 
ideas  of  form  and  composition.  His  work 
became  far  stronger  in  line  and  action,  and 
grander  in  form.  There  was  more  of  na- 
ture, affectations  were  dropped,  and  certain 
peculiarities  in  handling  of  draperies  disap- 
peared. The  St.  Catherine  of  the  later 
Florentine  manner,  now  in  the  -National 
Gallery,  London,  is  a  splendid  contrast  to 
the  Marriage  of  the  Virgin.  That  looks 
weak  beside  it.  The  strength  of  pose  and 
free,  grand  swing  of  line  and  natural  fullness 
of  form  in  the  St.  Catherine  makes  an  agree- 
able contrast  to  the  Marriage  of  the  Virgin. 
There  is  still  the  Peruginesque  feeling,  but 
it  is  less  sentimental,  far  more  virile  and 
much  loftier.  This  can  be  seen  to  the  full 
in  one  of  the  most  famous  pictures  of  the 
Florentine  manner,  The  Madonna  of  the 
Goldfinch,  Graceful  and  sweet  in  expres- 
sion, it  has  besides  a  strength  which  places 
it  far  above  Perugino's  rather  weak  works. 
The  face  has  the  regularity  of  classic  art, 
but  far  more  warmth  of  expression.  The 
beautiful  pure  line  and  form  is  such  as  Ra- 
phael alone  mastered.  The  head  of  the 
Christ  child  is  not  successful  when  com- 
pared to  that  of  the  child  in  the  Madonna  di 
San  Sisto.  It  looks  almost  unhealthy  beside 
that,  and  too  strained  in  the  effect  of  expres- 
sion. The  equally  famous  La  Belle  Jar- 
diniere, in  the  Louvre,  is  far  more  successful 
in  the  Christ  child,  here  entirely  natural, 


but  without  the  peculiar  something  which 
makes  the  Christ  child  in  the  Madonna  di 
San  Sisto  supreme.  Moreover,  the  light 
and  shade  in  La  Belle  Jardiniere  is  far 
stronger.  It  is  impossible  to  describe  the 
beautiful  flow  of  line  and  the  tender  model- 
ing of  form  in  this  picture.  (See  the  full 
page  cut  on  p.  385).  ^  Whereas  Michelangelo 
seems  to  have  hewed  out  his  mighty  lines, 
Raphael  appears  to  have  loved  his  into 
being,  so  gracefully  do  they  flow  and  ripple 
one  into  the  other,  so  fraught  are  they  with 
feeling  and  tenderness. 


F 


LORENTINE  AND  ROMAN 
SCHOOLS:  RAPHAEL.— Con- 
tinued. (6) 


Many  artists  of  the  Renaissance 
reached  full  prime  early  in  life.  Whether  the 
greater  stimulus  of  a  universal  appreciation 
of  art  or  whether  peculiar  training  was  the 
cause  is  hard  to  say.  There  is  one  thing  cer- 
tain, however,  that  art  training  was  begun 
earlier.  When  Raphael  was  twenty-five 
years  old  his  fame  completely  filled  Italy. 
He  had  then  entirely  emerged  from  the 
Peruginesque  manner,  based  his  work  on 
nature,  rather  than  on  the  traditions  which 
governed  Perugino,  and  had  far  greater 
scope  than  that  master.  It  was  now  that 
Bramante,  the  architect,  saw  that  his  fellow 
townsman  had  become  strong  enough,  and 
he  recommended  Raphael  to  Pope  Julius  II. 
to  decorate  rooms  in  the  Vatican.  The 
youthful  Raphael  saw  the  mighty  frescoes 
of  Michaelangelo  and  fell  under  their  power- 
ful spell,  and  it  is  from  this  time  that  his 
third  manner,  the  Roman,  dates.  The  new 
element,  the  grandeur  of  Michelangelo, 
appeared,  and  now  there  sprang  from  under 
his  wonderful  brush  those  creations  from 
which  succeeding  artists  have  borrowed 
something  or  other,  but  which  none  have 
been  able  to  equal,  much  less  improve  upon. 
There  were  four  of  these  halls  or  stanzas 
which  Raphael  decorated.  They  had  al- 
ready been  partly  decorated  by  Perugino 
and  Francesca;  but  when  Raphael  had  fin- 
ished the  first  stanza,  the  pope  was  so  aston- 
ished and  delighted  that  he  commanded  that 


382 


PAINTING: 


all  the  former  frescoes  should  be  destroyed 
and  that  Raphael  should  decorate  the  entire 
hall.  This  Raphael  refused  to  do.  He 
venerated  his  old  master,  and  it  was  foreign 
to  him  to  slight  what  had  been  done  by 
others.  The  first  stanza  to  be  decorated 
was  the  Judicial  Assembly  Hall,  called  "La 
Segnatura."  Here  he  painted  in  grand 
allegories  representations  of  Theology, 
Poetry,  Philosophy  and  Jurisprudence. 


of  Theology,  or  Knowledge  of  Divine 
Things,  are  the  most  beautiful  in  line  and 
pose.  There  is  an  indescribable  grace 
about  these  figures,  an  earnest,  gentle  se- 
riousness and  serenity.  For  a  gentle  rhyth- 
mic flow  of  line,  so  that  one  takes  up  where 
another  ends,  Raphael  has  never  been  sur- 
passed. 

The  large  wall  decorations  in  this  stanza 
illustrate  the  progression  of  Raphael's  style, 


THE    "DISPUTA. "      RAPHAEL. 


Four  allegorical  figures  representing  these 
abstractions  appear  in  circular  spaces  on  the 
vaulted  ceiling.  Under  these  figures  and 
on  the  four  sides  of  the  room  Raphael 
painted  four  great  pictures  about  fifteen 
feet  high  by  twenty-five  feet  wide,  illustrat- 
ing historically  the  four  allegorical  figures 
above.  The  allegorical  figures  are  painted 
against  a  gold  background  which  is  treated 
as  a  mosaic.  The  figure  of  Poetry  and  that 


a  progression  so  rapid  that  it  becomes  ap- 
parent even  in  this  single  room.  Under 
the  figure  of  Theology  is  the  so-called  La 
Disputa  del  Sacramento,  which  should 
rather  be  called  Divine  Inspiration.  This 
was  the  first  painting  that  he  did.  Next 
came  the  Parnassus,  painted  under  the 
allegorical  figure  of  Poetry.  Here  we  find 
the  painting  less  minutely  done,  with  less 
of  the  old  clinging  to  it.  With  the  School 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


383 


of  Athens,  placed  under  the  figure  of 
Philosophy,  we  reach  a  larger  style  and 
grander  composition,  with  the  general  mass 
thought  of  more  than  the  detail. 

There  is  something  majestic,  however,  in 
the  line  of  Saints  in  the  Divine  Inspiration, 
as  it  sweeps  in  a  curve  from  one  side  of  the 
composition  to  the  other,  and  divides  the 
field  in  a  peculiarly  happy  proportion  of 
space.  This  line  is  again  beautifully  opposed 
by  the  extended  line  of  prelates,  sages  and 
students  underneath.  It  is  this  thorough 
understanding  of  the  necessities  of  clearly 
divided  spaces  and  strong  leading  lines  en- 
closing different  elements  of  the  composition 
that  makes  Raphael's  decorations  so  truly 
architectural  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they 
are  "holes"  in  the  wall.  That  Raphael  has 
clung  to  gold  ornamentation  and  certain 
other  conventionalities  in  the  upper  part  of 
this  composition,  is  no  doubt  due  to  the 
absolute  impossibility  of  depicting  such  a 
scene  with  anything  but  symbols.  How  won- 
derfully the  main  axis  of  the  composition 
is  kept  through  the  figure  of  Christ,  and  how' 
well  all  the  lines  lead  to  that  figure,  any 
one  can  perceive.  The  Parnassus  is  com- 
posed over  and  on  each  side  of  a  window. 
The  composition  here  has  the  rhythmic 
grouping  of  figures  so  characteristic  of  the 
Last  Supper,  by  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  Al- 
though subdivided  into  groups,  the  compo- 
sition has  a  wonderful  unity,  the  total  line 
made  by  the  several  groups  beautifully  fit- 
ting the  architectural  setting  and  the  space 
to  be  covered. 

The  School  of  Athens  is  the  most  im- 
pressive of  the  four  compositions.  It  is 
truly  great  in  dignity  of  line  and  mass.  The 
figures  are  grand  beings,  elevated  above  the 
common,  beings  who  impress  one  with 
powers  beyond  the  ordinary.  Again  there 
is  the  same  ordering  of  the  separate  parts, 
the  same  unity;  but  the  composition  has 
even  more  stability  and  architectural  weight. 
The  different  groups  are  varied  and  full  of 
interest.  The  two  central  figures,  Plato 
and  Aristotle,  are  grand  in  form  and  ges- 
ture, and  are  a  worthy  climax  to  it  all.  On 
the  whole  this  is  perhaps  the  grandest 
composition,  the  most  sublime,  of  all  the 
stanzas. 


The  fourth  composition  under  Jurispru- 
dence had  to  meet  the  same  difficulty  as  the 
Parnassus.  A  large  window  breaks  up  the 
space,  but  instead  of  being  covered  with  one 
composition  this  wall  is  divided  into  three 
separate  pictures.  Directly  under  the  ceil- 
ing and  enclosed  by  the  arch  are  represented 
Prudence,  Fortitude  and  Temperance,  as 
virtues  necessary  for  the  application  of  law 
to  daily  life.  At  the  sides  of  the  window  is 
represented  the  Science  of  Jurisprudence,  in 
its  two  divisions  of  ecclesiastical  and  civil 
law.  Justinian  on  the  left  represents  state 
law,  and  Gregory  XL  on  the  right  ecclesias- 
tical law.  The  picture  in  the  arch,  without 
being  so  majestic  in  composition  as  the 
others,  is  magnificently  beautiful  in  gran- 
deur of  figure,  in  beautiful  roundness  of 
form,  in  fine  arrangement  of  drapery,  in  a 
wonderful  balance  and  opposition  of  line 
and  mass,  and  above  all  by  a  flow  and 
rhythm  of  line  which  ripples  through  the 
whole  composition. 

It  was  not  till  the  year  1510  that  Raphael 
commenced  the  second  stanza,  called  Stanza 
dell'  Eliodoro,  from  the  most  famous  com- 
position in  it.  The  pictures  in  this  room 
are  the  Expulsion  of  Heliodorus  from  the 
Temple,  the  Mass  of  Bolsena,  the  Attila, 
and  St.  Peter  Delivered  from  Prison.  The 
last  named,  besides  being  a  fine  dramatic 
rendering  of  the  subject,  is  a  masterful 
rendering  of  conflicting  lights,  of  the  sheen 
on  armor,  and  6f  the  vigor  of  attitude. 
The  figure  of  the  angel  leading  St.  Peter 
from  the  prison  is  a  peculiarly  strong  yet 
beautiful  one.  The  Expulsion  of  Heliodorus 
from  the  Temple  is  the  strongest  among  the 
compositions  of  this  stanza.  Here  the 
dramatic  element  is  still  more  evident. 
The  rush  of  the  angels  bent  on  their  errand 
of  punishment,  and  the  agitation  of  the 
spectators  are  finely  given.  The  beautiful 
wrathful  being  on  the  horse  is  fine  in  power 
of  form  and  vigor  of  pose. 

The  Stanza  dell'  Incendio  was  done  in 
great  part  by  Raphael's  scholars  from  his 
designs.  Commissions  poured  in  upon  him 
in  such  numbers  that  he  was  unable  to  do 
much  but  direct  the  work  of  his  scholars  and 
furnish  the  designs.  He  had,  moreover,  suc- 
ceeded Bramante  as  architect  of  St.  Peter's, 


PAINTING: 


MIRACULOUS    DRAUGHT     OF    FISHES.       RAPHAEL. 


and  his  hands  were  too  full.  The  work  in 
this  stanza  progressed  so  slowly  that  the 
fourth  chamber,  the  Sala  di  Costantino,  was 
not  completed  until  after  his  death.  In  the 
Stanza  dell'  Incendio  was  painted  the  Vic- 
tory at  Ostia  over  the  Saracens,  The  Oath  of 
Leo  III.,  Charlemagne  Crowned  by  Leo 
III.,  and  The  Fire  in  the  Borgo. 

The  Fire  in  the  Borgo  is  the  most  remark- 
able work  in  this  stanza.  It  shows  perhaps 
most  thoroughly  of  all  Raphael's  work  the 
influence  of  Michelangelo  in  powerful  forms 
and  anatomical  rendering.  In  particular 
the  figure  of  the  woman  to  the  right  is  a 
powerful  rendering  of  form  and  windswept 
drapery.  The  agitation  and  varying  degrees 
of  despair  in  the  single  figures  are  wonder- 
fully rendered,  and  there  is  still  a  well-bal- 
anced, well-united  composition;  but  in  some 
of  the  other  pictures  in  this  stanza  begin  to 
be  seen  the  germs  of  the  tendency  so  soon 
to  ruin  the  art  of  Italy, — a  striving  for  dra- 
matic effect  at  any  cost,  an  exaggeration  of 
muscular  development  and  action. 

The  Victory  over  the  Saracens,  for  in- 
stance, lacks  the  stability  of  mass  and  gran- 
deur of  line  so  essential  to  a  monumental 
decoration,  and  in  the  Sala  del  Costantino, 
which  was  done  after  Raphael's  death,  and 
in  which  his  designs  were  deliberately  al- 


tered, there  is  visible 
a  positive  degeneracy. 
Crowded,  restless  and 
confused  compositions 
displace  the  grand  ma- 
jestic, architectural 
compositions  of  the 
Stanza  del  Segnatura. 
There  is  a  striving  to 
show  anatomical  skill, 
to  make  a  figure  pow- 
erful by  exaggerating 
form,  and  the  execution 
is  much  more  careless 
and  coarse. 

The    Loggii,    of    the 
Vatican,  open   galleries 
running    around    three 
sides  of  an  open  court, 
were  also  decorated  by 
Raphael's  scholars  un- 
der his  personal   direc- 
tion.    The  entire  series  of  pictures  here  is 
called  Raphael's  Bible. 


F 


LORENTINE  AND  ROMAN 
SCHOOLS:  RAPHAEL.— Con- 
cluded.^'] 


There  was  still  one  more  great 
undertaking  that  Raphael  did  for  the  Vati- 
can. That  was  making  the  cartoons  for 
tapestries  for  the  Sistine  Chapel.  The 
lower  walls  of  the  chapel  had  been  orna- 
mented with  paintings  in  imitation  of  dra- 
peries, but  Leo  X.  resolved  to  substitute  real 
draperies  of  the  most  costly  material,  and 
he  commissioned  Raphael  to  design  the  car- 
toons for  them.  These  were  to  be  copied  by 
the  looms  of  Flanders,  and  worked  in  a  mix- 
ture of  wool,  silk  and  gold.  In  spite  of  their 
costliness  of  material,  all  the  tapestries  to- 
gether are  not  worth  one  of  the  cartoons; 
yet  for  a  long  while  these  were  lost  or  for- 
gotten in  the  dusty  warehouse  of  the  weaver 
at  Arras.  Three  of  these  invaluable  car- 
toons were  never  recovered,  but  the  remain- 
ing ten,  after  running  many  risks  of 
destruction,  came  by  the  advice  of  Rubens 
into  the  hands  of  Charles  I.  of  England. 
They  are  now  in  the  Kensington  Museum, 


LA  BELLE  JARDINERE.   RAPHAEL.   (SEE  PAGE  381.) 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


387 


London,  and  form  one  of  the  greatest  art 
treasures  in  the  world. 

The  subject  of  the  designs  is  the  history 
of  the  Apostles.  Richardson  says  about  the 
figures  in  these  pictures  that  they  are  a  sort 
of  people  superior  to  what  one  has  ever 
seen.  "What  grace  and  majesty,"  says  he, 
"is  seen  in  the  great  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles 
in  all  his  actions,  preaching,  rending  his 
garments,  denouncing  vengeance  upon  the 
Sorcerer!  What  a  dignity  is  in  the  other 
Apostles  wherever  they  appear,  particularly 
the  prince  of  them  in  the  cartoon  of 
Ananias!  How  infinitely  and  divinely 
great,  with  all  his  gentleness  and  simplicity, 
is  the  Christ  in  the  boat!  But  these  are 
exalted  characters,  which  have  a  delicacy  in 
them  as  much  beyond  what  any  of  the  gods, 
demi-gods,  or  heroes  of  the  ancient  heathens 
admit  of,  as  the  Christian  religion  excels  the 
ancient  superstition!"  The  younger  Rich- 
ardson compares  the  frescoes  of  the  Vatican 
Stanza  with  the  cartoons,  and  sa)^  about 
the  latter,  "They  are  better  painted,  colored 
and  drawn;  the  composition  is  better,  the 
airs  of  the  heads  are  more  exquisitely  fine ; 
there  is  more  grace  and  greatness  spread 
throughout;  in  short,  they  are  better  pic- 
tiires,  judging  them  only  as  they  are  com- 
monly judged  of,  and  without  taking  the 
thought  and  invention  into  the  account." 

Sir  Charles  Eastlake  says:  "As  designs 
they  are  universally  considered  the  finest 
inventions  of  Raphael.  At  the  time  he  was 
commissioned  to  prepare  them,  the  fame  of 
Michelangelo's  ceiling,  in  the  same  chapel 
they  were  destined  to  adorn,  was  at  its 
height;  and  Raphael,  inspired  with  a  noble 
emulation,  his  practice  matured  by  the  exe- 
cution of  several  frescoes  in  the  Vatican, 
treated  these  new  subjects  with  an  elevation 
of  style  not  perhaps  equaled  in  his  former 
efforts.  The  highest  qualities  of  these 
works  are  undoubtedly  addressed  to  the 
mind,  as  vivid  interpretations  of  the  spirit 
and  letter  of  the  Scriptures;  but  as  exam- 
ples of  art  they  are  the  most  perfect  expres- 
sions of  that  general  grandeur  of  treatment 
in  form,  composition,  and  draperies,  which 
the  Italian  masters  contemplated  from  the 
first,  as  suited  to  the  purposes  of  religion  and 
the  size  of  the  tem-ples  destined  to  receive 


such  works.  In  the  cartoons  this  greatness 
of  style,  not  without  a  due  regard  to  variety 
of  character,  pervades  every  figure,  and  is  so 
striking  in  some  of  the  Apostles  as  to  place 
them  on  a  level  with  the  Prophets  of 
Michelangelo." 

Raphael's  greatest  easel  pictures  are  from 
his  Roman  manner.  Among  them  are  some 
wonderful  portraits.  The  Fornarina,  a 
portrait  of  Raphael's  supposed  mistress, 
Pope  Julius  II.,  and  Pope  Leo  X.  are  among 
the  best.  In  these  portraits  one  receives  an 
additional  proof  of  the  wonderful  range  of 
Raphael's  art.  One  who  is  essentially  ideal 
in  his  treatment  of  figures,  ordinarily  so 
that  they  are  very  impersonal,  here  comes 
out  in  strong  realistic  rendering  of  indi- 
viduality and  personality — the  very  essence 
of  the  man  portrayed.  What  a  difference 
between  the  two  popes!  One  rather  coarse 
featured,  round  jawed  and  fat,  but  with 
wrinkled  brow  and  tightly-clipped  lips  de- 
noting great  determination  and  will  power; 
the  other  old  and  bent,  refined  of  feature, 
but  with  deep,  serious  eyes  denoting  purpose, 
set  under  the  overhanging,  reflective  brow. 
Then  how  splendidly  Raphael  has  rendered 


PORTRAIT    OF    POPE    JULIUS    II.       RAPHAEL 


PAINTING: 


the  textures,  he  who  has  been  accused  of 
not  knowing  how  to  render  them !  Here  the 
varying-  qualities  of  texture  in  fur,  velvet, 
hair,  metal,  etc.,  are  given  with  the  utmost 
fidelity. 

To  the  Roman  period  belongs  also  the 
celebrated  St.  Cecilia,  a  picture  full  of  inde- 
scribable sentiment,  with  noble  forms  and 
expressive  attitudes.  Notice,  for  instance, 
the  ecstatic  uplifted  face  of  St.  Cecilia,  and 
her  graceful,  beautiful  form,  the  powerful 


MADONNA    DELLA    SEDIA    (CHAIR),    OR    SECGIOLA    (LITTLE     CHAIR).       RAPHAEL. 


brooding  figure  of  St.  Paul,  so  majestic  in 
its  swing  of  line,  and  the  highstrung,  soulful, 
inspired  head  of  St.  John.  What  a  contrast 
these  strongly-moved  but  quiet  figures  to  the 
St.  Michael  and  Satan  in  the  Louvre,  where 
the  beautiful  form  of  the  Angel  appears 
like  a  flash  on  the  groveling  demon. 

Raphael's  Madonnas  are  the  greatest  in 
all  art.  Here  also  how  magnificently  varied 
he  is!  Some  are  the  joyful  mothers  of  the 
earth,  some  are  wistful  and  tender,  others 


are  the  divine  being  who  is  to  be  worshiped. 
The   Madonna  della  Sedia,   "of  the    Chair" 
and   the   Madonna    di   San    SisLo  or  Sistine 
Madonna  are  the  best  known.     The  former 
is  a  circular  composition,  and  it  is  a  wonder- 
ful adaptation  to  its  field.     There  is  an  ex- 
quisite tenderness  in    the    way  the  mother 
caressingly   bends   her   head    down    to    her 
child's.      But  the  greatest  of  all  the  Madon- 
nas is  the  Madonna  di  San  Sisto,  now  in  the 
Dresden  Gallery.      Here    is  the    most  won- 
derful representation 
of    a  divine  child    and 
a  divine  mother,  divine 
but    still   human,    with 
the    power    to    sym- 
pathize   with     the    hu- 
man.     Never    has    the 
Christ  child  been  so  ex- 
altedly  treated.     Truly 
a  child;  there  is  still  an 
indescribable  depth    in 
the     eyes,     which     be- 
speaks worlds  of  thought 
and  power.     How  ten- 
der and  sympathetic  the 
mother  through  all  her 
majesty;  how  sweet  and 
humble   the    reverence 
of   St.    Barbara,  as   she 
sinks    to    her   knees   in 
adoration ;  how  trustful 
and  expressive  in   atti- 
tude   the    Pope,    as  he 
intercedes  for  humanity 
outside.     The  composi- 
tion is  a  marvel  of  grace, 
rhythm,  flow,  and   bal- 
ance  of   line,   and    the 
drapery   is   managed 
with  a  wonderful  skill, 

so  that  although  every  fold  falls  in  just  the 
right  place,  it  still  looks  as  if  taken  directly 
from  nature.  The  glory  of  innumerable 
angels'  heads  in  the  background  lends  a  ra- 
diance to  the  whole  composition ;  and  the 
two  cherubs  below  bestow  a  charming  note  of 
naive,  childlike  seriousness,  besides  filling 
out  the  composition  in  just  the  right  place. 
Raphael  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  fully 
appreciated  while  still  living.  His  com- 
missions were  innumerable,  and  he  became 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITALY. 


389 


rich.  It  was  said  of 
him  that  he  lived  rath- 
er like  a  prince  than  a 
painter;  but  his  spirit 
was  always  the  same: 
gentle,  courteous,  kind, 
free  from  all  petty  jeal- 
ousy  and  ill-feeling. 
When  he  went  to  the 
Papal  Court  it  is  said 
that  fifty  of  his  pupils 
and  fellow  workers  al- 
ways attended  him  as 
though  they  were  his 
retinue,  and  they  glo- 
ried in  doing  him  such 
homage.  His  life  be- 
came so  busy  that  many 
pictures  left  his  studio 
which  were  not  done  by 
him,  but  which  were 
attributed  to  him.  Then 
those  who  were  jealous 
of  him  would  insinuate 
that  Raphael  was  losing 
power,  that  his  mastery 
was  declining.  Thus,  it 
is  said,  he  decided  to 
paint  a  picture  entirely 
by  his  own  hand  which 
should  forever  refute 
the  accusation.  This 
was  the  Transfigura- 
tion, which,  it  is  further 
said,  he  painted  in  in- 
direct competition  with 

Michelangelo.  The  story  goes  that  the  latter 
desired  to  put  Sebastiano  del  Piombo  forward 
as  no  unworthy  rival  of  Raphael ;  but  to  in- 
sure good  design  he  composed  and  drew  in  the 
picture  himself,  much  to  the  delight  of  Ra- 
phael, who  expressed  pleasiire  at  the  austere 
Michelangelo  himself  entering  into  compe- 
tition with  him.  Although  profound  in 
thought  and  beautiful  in  execution,  while 
tremendously  expressive  in  action  and  ges- 
ture, and  full  of  dramatic  force,  we  still  feel 
in  the  Transfiguration  a  lack  of  the  sim- 
plicity and  unity  of  composition  so  essentially 
a  usual  characteristic  of  Raphael.  Here 
one  sees  really  two  compositions,  in  no  par- 
ticular way  tied  together  except  by  the 


MADONNA    DI    SAN    SISTO.       RAPHAEL. 


thought  contained  in  the  scenes  depicted. 
Pictorially  it  is  two  compositions.  The 
restlessness  of  drapery  in  the  three  floating 
figures  also  mars  the  sublimity  of  the  con- 
ception. Kugler,  however,  says:  "The 
twofold  action  contained  in  this  picture,  to 
which  shallow  critics  have  taken  exception, 
is  explained  historically  and  satisfactorily 
merely  by  the  fact  that  the  incident  of  the 
possessed  boy  occurred  in  the  absence  of 
Christ;  but  it  explains  itself  in  a  still  higher 
sense,  when  we  consider  the  deeper,  uni- 
versal meaning  of  the  picture.  For  this 
purpose  it  is  not  even  necessary  to  consult 
the  books  of  the  New  Testament  for  the 
explanation  of  the  particular  incidents;  the 


39° 


PAINTING: 


lower  portion  represents  the  calamities 
and  miseries  of  human  life — the  rule  of 
demoniac  power,  the  weakness  even  of  the 
faithful  when  unassisted — and  points  to  a 
superior  power.  Above  in  the  brightness 
of  divine  bliss,  undisturbed  by  the  suffering 
of  the  lower  world,  we  behold  the  source  of 
consolation  and  redemption  from  evil."  All 
of  this,  however,  deals  only  with  the  intel- 
lectual phase  of  the  subject  and  does  not  do 
away  with  the  feeling,  that  pictorially  the 
composition  falls  short,  in  that  the  eye  must 
force  itself  from  one  point  of  interest  to 
another,  and  that  there  is  no  single  climax, 
no  one  center  of  interest  to  which  every- 
thing should  lead. 

It  is  indeed  a  wonder  that  Raphael  in  his 
short  life  should  have  been  able  to  accom- 
plish so  much.  Besides  his  painting,  he  was 
architect  of  St.  Peter's  after  Bramante's 
death ;  he  designed  several  works  in  sculp- 
ture; and  he  conducted  excavations  which 
brought  to  light  the  treasures  of  the  old 
Rome  hidden  underground.  It  was  while 
engaged  in  this  last  work  that  he  exposed 
himself  so  that  he  was  taken  with  a  violent 
fever,  and  died  after  fourteen  days'  illness 
on  his  birthday,  April  6th,  thirty-seven  years 
old.  All  classes  grieved  over  his  prema- 
ture death,  and  the  grief  of  his  friends  and 
scholars  was  unspeakable.  It  is  said  that  the 
pope,  upon  hearing  of  Raphael's  death,  broke 
out  into  lamentations  over  his  own  and  the 
world's  loss.  After  lying  in  state  with  the 
picture  of  the  Transfiguration,  still  wet  and 
unfinished  (afterwards  completed  by  Guilio 
Romano)  suspended  over  his  head,  his  re- 
mains were  carried  to  the  church  of  the 
Pantheon,  a  multitude  of  all  ranks  following 
in  a  sad  procession,  and  was  there  interred 
as  he  himself  had  requested. 

Painters  had  poured  into  Rome  from  all 
quarters  of  Italy  during  Raphael's  lifetime, 
and  they  tried  to  imitate  his  style  closely. 
After  his  death  this  school,  the  Roman,  was 
scattered  over  Italy,  the  conquest  and 
pillage  of  Rome  in  1527  by  the  French  con- 
tributing not  a  little  to  dispersing  them. 
But  the  imitation  of  a  master,  as  in  the  case 
of  Michelangelo,  proved  fatal,  what  origin- 
ality they  might  have  had  being  entirely 
lost. 


F 


LORENTINE  AND  ROMAN 
SCHOOLS:  ROMANO  AND 
OTHERS.  MILANESE  SCHOOL. 
SIENNESE  SCHOOL.  (8) 


Giulio  Romano  (1492-1546)  was  the  strong- 
est of  Raphael's  pupils,  and  became  the  real 
founder  of  the  Roman  School,  which  directly 
influenced  the  painting  of  the  Decadence. 
As  long  as  he  was  under  Raphael's  influence 
he  painted  so  closely  in  his  style  that  in 
many  instances  his  work  is  almost  like  his 
master's;  but  after  Raphael's  death  he 
struck  out  for  himself,  and  in  his  hands  the 
refined  strength  and  power  of  Raphael  be- 
came exaggerated  coarseness.  He  was  a 
good  draughtsman,  but  his  forms  are  heavy 
and  entirely  lack  the  grace  of  Raphael.  His 
color  was  dead  and  of  a  bricky  tone,  due,  it 
is  said,  to  his  having  been  employed  so  much 
by  Raphael  for  the  dead-coloring  of  his  pic- 
tures. In  his  decorations  at  Mantua,  the 
Fall  of  the  Giants,  in  the  Palazzo  del  Te,  he 
oversteps  all  bounds  of  taste  and  artistic 
judgment.  The  walls  are  painted  as  a  tum- 
bling, chaotic  mass  of  architecture,  in  the 
midst  of  which  the  bulky  giants  are  being 
crushed.  The  decorations  are  entirely  out 
of  scale  with  the  room,  which  is  rather 
small.  Thus  the  decadence  of  Italian  art  is 
already  staring  one  in  the  face ;  for  here 
the  nice  discrimination  of  fitness,  of  har- 
mony, of  restrained  and  ordered  power  is 
entirely  lost. 

Francesco  Penni  (i488?-i528)  was,  next  to 
Giulio  Romano,  Raphael's  most  confidential 
assistant.  He  died  only  eight  years  after 
Raphael,  and  his  works  are  rare;  but  he 
seems  to  have  been  content  to  closely  follow 
Raphael's  style. 

Francesco  Primaticcio  (1490-1570)  was  a 
pupil  of  Giulio  Romano.  He  assisted  Giulio 
in  the  Palazzo  del  Te,  and  was  afterwards 
invited  by  Francis  I.  to  France,  where  he 
had  much  to  do  with  founding  the  school  of 
Fontainebleau. 

Giovanni  da  Udine  (1487-1564)  was  trained 
in  the  Venetian  School  before  coming  to 
Raphael.  He  was  chiefly  distinguished  for 
painting  the  arabesques  in  the  Loggie  of  the 
Vatican.  The  style  of  these  was  founded 
on  the  antique  decorations  in  the  Baths  of 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITALY. 


Titus,  then  recently  discovered,  and  formed 
a  new  school  of  ornamental  art,  the  influ- 
ence of  which  is  still  felt. 

Perino  del  Vaga  (1500-1547)  also  did  some 
decorative  work  in  the  Loggia  of  great  liveli- 
ness and  interest.  The  little  Cupids,  for 
instance,  holding  wreaths,  etc.,  are  full  of 
lively  action  and  drawn  with  much  vigor  and 
grace. 

Andrea  Sabbatini  (1480?- 1545)  was  one 
of  the  chief  instruments  in  bringing  the 
principles  of  the  Roman  School  to  the  south 
of  Italy.  Sabbatini 's  color  was  good,  but 
he  fell  into  a  mannered 
style  in  trying  to  fol- 
low Raphael.  Several 
artists  from  the  Bo- 
lognese  School,  and  fol- 
lowers of  Francia,  en- 
tered into  Raphael's 
School. 

Innocenza    da     Imoli 

(i494-i550?),  although 
he  never  resided  in 
Rome,  became  such  a 
zealous  follower  of  Ra- 
phael that  he  often  re- 
peats whole  figures  from 
Raphael's  pictures  in 
his  own  compositions. 

Timoteodi  Viti  (1469- 
1523)  was  born  at  Ur- 
bino  and  returned  there 
after  a  short  residence 
at  Rome.  His  work  has 
the  grace  of  Raphael 
and  a  good  deal  of  the 
Umbrian  sentiment 
His  Magdalene  in  the 

Desert  is  a  charming  example  of  his  work, 
and  shows  that  he  did  not  run  into  the  ex- 
cesses of  the  Roman  School. 

The  Milanese  School. — Leonardo  da  Vinci 
and  his  academy  exerted  a  great  influence 
on  the  painters  of  Milan,  and  many  painters 
followed  his  type  and  methods.  Kugler 
says:  "The  distinguishing  qualities  of  Leo- 
nardo were  variously  repeated  by  his  schol- 
ars, according  to  their  own  individual  pe- 
culiarities. Although  none  attained  to 
his  eminence,  a  certain  amiable  and  pure 
spirit,  reflected  from  his  noble  mind, 


pervades  the  whole  school.  This  spirit  seems 
to  have  preserved  his  followers  from  falling 
into  the  unmeaning  style,  and  mere  aca- 
demic ostentation,  which  characterize  almost 
all  the  schools  founded  by  the  other  great 
masters  of  the  time."  The  most  prominent 
of  Leonardo's  followers  was 

Bernardino  Luini  (1475?- 1533?),  whose 
work  is  characterized  by  sweetness  and 
purity  of  sentiment,  a  trait  really  distin- 
guishing the  whole  school.  His  style  re- 
sembles Leonardo's  to  such  an  extent  that 
several  pictures  which  are  now  attributed  to 


DAUGHTER    OF    HERODIAS.       LUINI. 


Luini  were  formerly  thought  to  be  Leo- 
nardo's. The  Herodias'  Daughter,  in  the 
Uffizi,  for  instance,  is  one  of  these.  It  has 
much  of  Leonardo's  charm  and  softness  of 
light  and  shade  and  much  of  his  grace,  but 
it  lacks  the  penetration  of  that  master  and 
his  power  to  represent  character. 

Luini's  frescoes  rank  him  among  the  first 
fresco  painters,  for  his  technique  in  that 
medium  was  astonishingly  free  and  bold. 
In  the  Brera  Gallery  are  several  fragments 
of  his  wall-paintings,  and  among  them  the 
Body  of  St.  Catherine  Borne  to  the  Tomb  is 


392 


PAINTING: 


the  finest.  This  is  distinguished  by  a  beau- 
tiful simplicity,  purity  and  tenderness  of 
spirit. 

Marco  da  Oggiono  (i47o?-i53o)  was  also  a 
close  follower  of  Leonardo,  but  he  did  not 
have  the  sweetness  and  deep  charm  of  Luini. 
He  made  an  excellent  copy  of  Leonardo's 
Last  Supper.  Andrea  del  Salaino  (fl.  1495- 
1518)  resembles  him,  but  has  more  freedom 
and  power.  Beltraffio  (1467-1516)  is  a 
painter  of  much  gentle  refinement  and 
purity.  Andrea  Solario  (i458?-i5i5?)  shows 


SAINT    SEBASTIAN.       SODOMA. 


by  a  portrait  in  the  London  Gallery  a  de- 
cided Flemish  influence  in  the  close  follow- 
ing of  line  and  modeling.  But  he  came 
later  under  the  influence  of  Leonardo  at 
Milan.  The  Flemish  carefulness  still  distin- 
guished him,  but  his  work  became  imbued 
with  much  feeling  and  tenderness.  Care- 
fully-wrought detail  and  smooth  finish  is 
also  characteristic  of  him.  Qaudenzio 
Ferrara  (1481?- 15 47?)  is  distinguished  by  a 
peculiarly  fantastic  style  of  his  own.  He 
was  an  exceptionally  brilliant  colorist,  but 


his  work  lacks  tone.  He  used  primaries 
almost  entirely,  and  his  color  lacks  unity. 
His  frescoes  are  almost  equal  to  Luini's  in 
freshness.  He  painted  unevenly,  and  senti- 
ment with  him  was  sometimes  carried  too 
far,  but  in  all  he  is  considered  one  of  the 
most  interesting  painters  of  northern  Italy. 

The  Siennese  School,  which  had  been  so 
important  in  the  Gothic  period,  had  no 
artists  of  any  prominence  in  the  fifteenth 
century;  but  in  the  sixteenth  century  it  saw 
a  decided  revival  under  the  leadership  of 
Sodoma  (also  variously  called  Razzi  or 
Bazzi),  (i477?-i549),  who  settled  in  Sienna 
and  built  up  a  school  there.  He  was  a 
pupil  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  and  his  earlier 
work  was  strongly  influenced  by  him.  He 
seems  much  better  in  single  figures  than  in 
large  compositions  where  many  figures  are 
introduced,  for  these  are  often  crowded. 
The  human  figure  he  rendered  with  the 
greatest  beauty  of  form  and  line  and  ex-, 
pression,  and  his  best  female  heads  are 
almost  ranked  with  Leonardo's.  His  St. 
Sebatian,  in  the  Uffizi,  shows  a  fineness  of 
form  almost  classic  in  its  perfection  of 
modeling.  In  his  Descent  into  Hades, 
now  in  the  Museum  of  Sienna,  the  figure  of 
Eve  is  so  beautiful,  so  exquisite  in  line  and 
proportion,  with  so  much  of  Leonardo's 
charm  and  feeling,  that  it  is  justly  famous. 
The  figure  is  part  of  a  fresco  in  which 
medium  Sodoma's  best  works  were  done. 
Sodoma  became  a  friend  of  Raphael,  and 
later  in  life  he  was  strongly  influenced  by 
him. 

The  other  men  of  the  Siennese  school 
were  not  of  much  strength,  and  the  influence 
of  the  school  in  the  sixteenth  century  was 
very  slight.  Baldassare  Peruzzi  (1481-1536) 
was  one  of  the  best  of  the  modern  archi- 
tects, and  he  also  holds  considerable  rank  as 
a  painter.  He  is  especially  known  for  his 
architectural  ornamental  painting.  Domen- 
ico  Beccafumi  (1486-1551)  assisted  his  mas- 
ter Sodoma,  and  at  such  times  his  work 
approaches  the  excellence  of  his  master's. 
He  became  more  mechanical  in  later  life. 
Pacchiarotta  (1474-1540?),  who  also  assisted 
Sodoma  in  his  frescoes,  and  Qirolamo  della 
Pacchia  (1477-1535)  are  other  painters  of 
this  school. 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


393 


F 


ERRARA  AND  BOLOGNESE 
SCHOOLS:  CORREGGIO  AND 
OTHERS  (9) 


Although  the  painters  of  these 
schools  are  classed  as  followers  of  Raphael, 
they  show  distinctive  characteristics  of  their 
own,  especially  in  color,  which,  however, 
shows  some  Venetian  influence. 

Dosso  Dossi  (1479-1542)  of  Ferrara  was 
the  strongest  painter  of  these  schools,  a  man 
of  much  fancy  and  of  a  strikingly  original 
treatment  of  landscape.  In  his  color  he  was 
strongly  influenced  by  the  Venetians,  and 
his  portraits  are  said  to  have  been  worthy 
rivals  of  Titian's. 

Benvenuto  Garofolo  (1481-1559)  was  called 
by  the  Ferrarese  the  Ferrarese  Raphael. 
Wornum  calls  him  "a  Raphael  in  little." 
He  followed  the  Ferrarese  painters  first, 
but  later  he  came  under  Raphael's  influence 
at  Rome,  and  after  that  his  work  shows  the 
type  of  face  and  sweep  of  line  distinctive  of 
Raphael's  style.  His  earlier  pictures  are 
the  best,  however,  for  his  work  in  the 
Roman  style  was  very  mannered.  His  best 
work  is  perhaps  the  Adoration  of  the  Magi, 
in  Ferrara,  where  he  is  more  natural, 
although  the  style  is  more  like  that  of  the 
period  preceding  Leonardo  da  Vinci  than  of 
that  after  him.  His  drawing  shows  many 
weaknesses  and  false  proportions  in  some 
pictures. 

Bagnacavallo  (1484-1542)  was  first  a  pupil 
of  Francia  at  Bologna,  but  afterwards  he 
became  one  of  the  most  ardent  of  Raphael's 
followers.  So  much  was  this  so  that  he 
claimed  that  there  was  more  to  be  learned 
from  Raphael  than  from  nature  herself, 
"inasmuch  as  men  of  ordinary  ability  must 
be  content  of  necessity  to  learn  mediately 
through  higher  geniuses."  His  master- 
piece, Madonna  and  Child  in  Glory,  in  the 
Dresden  Gallery,  is  charming,  and  an  in- 
stance of  his  close  following  of  Raphael, 
althotigh  he  does  not  succeed  in  giving  the 
inner  spirit  through  the  outward  form  as  did 
Raphael. 

Correggio  (i494?-i534)  has  been  variously 
classed  with  the  Ferrara,  Bologna  and 
Lombard  schools.  The  latter  is  a  vague 
term.  Moreover,  Correggio  can  hardly  be 


classed  in  any  school  or  as  the  follower  of 
any  master,  for  he  is  absolutely  himself  and 
struck  an  original  note  in  art.  The  greater 
part  of  his  work  was  done  at  Parma,  and  his 
influence  there  was  felt  by  painters  who 
founded  the  so-called  school  of  Parma.  The 
might  of  Michelangelo,  the  serene  grandeur 
of  Raphael,  the  religious  feeling  of  Fra 
Bartolommeo  are  not  to  be  seen  in  Correg- 
gio. He  comes  nearer  Leonardo  da  Vinci 
than  any,  but  only  in  the  external  matter  of 
light  and  shade,  the  poetry  of  which  comes 
out  to  the  fullest  extent  in  Correggio.  He 
has  none  of  the  depth  of  soul  of  Leonardo, 
none  of  the  sublimely  grand,  sensuous 
quality  of  the  Venetians;  but  through  his 
work  runs  an  indescribable  grace,  a  joyous- 
ness  and  fullness  of  life,  a  lively  rhythm  of 
motion,  and  a  passionate  worship  of  nature, 
that  have  rightly  earned  him  the  title  of  the 
"Faun"  of  the  Renaissance.  It  is  in  him 
that  the  worship  of  nature  pure  and  simple 
reaches  its  height,  and  it  is  in  this  love  of 
nature,  of  its  joyous  moods  and  vivacity  of 
life,  that  he  is  the  Faun.  There  is  never  a 
sad  note  struck  in  Correggio's  work;  all  is 
like  an  early  summer  day.  He  cared  not  to 
tell  a  story  or  to  point  a  moral.  All  was 
done  for  the  love  of  nature's  beauties,  its 
mystery  of  light  and  shade  and  envelope,  the 
beauty  of  a  rounded  arm,  the  soft  bloom  on 
a  cheek,  the  depth  and  glow  and  sparkle  of 
color.  His  many  pictures  are  mostly  reli- 
gious in  subject,  but  he  treated  them  not 
for  the  religious  purpose.  Even  here  there 
is  the  same  joyousness,  the  same  earthly 
beauty  and  life  and  vivacity.  In  composi- 
tion Correggio  cared  less  for  line  than  for 
placing  a  beautiful  scheme  and  arrangement 
of  light  and  dark  on  the  canvas.  His  draw- 
ing was  not  always  of  the  surest,  but  his 
rendering  of  values  was  superb,  and  his 
soft,  all-surrounding  atmosphere  was  beau- 
tiful beyond  description.  In  color,  he  stood 
beside  the  great  Venetians,  and  his  brush- 
work  is  full  of  life  and  verve. 

About  Correggio's  life  very  little  is  defi- 
nitely known,  although  much  has  been  writ- 
ten and  conjectured.  He  seems  to  have  led 
an  uneventful  life  and  to  have  traveled 
little.  He  is  supposed  to  have  learned 
from  Lorenzo  Costa  and  Mantegna,  but  if  he 


394 


PAINTING: 


was  ever  under  the  influence  of  the  latter, 
his  mature  work  does  not  show  it.  The 
only  thing  about  his  work  that  suggests 
Mantegna's  influence  is  his  fondness  for 
foreshortening,  which  he  sometimes  carried 
to  excess.  For  instance,  in  his  Assumption 


In  the  same  cathedral  with  the  Assumption 
of  the  Virgin  he  painted  Christ  in  Glory 
Surrounded  by  Apostles,  and  a  Coronation 
of  the  Virgin.  In  the  convent  of  S.  Paolo 
he  painted  in  a  saloon  for  the  abbess  sub- 
jects from  ancient  mythology.  These  are 


MYSTIC   MARRIAGE   OF    SAINT   CATHERINE.       CORREGGIO. 


of  the  Virgin,  in  the  Cathedral  at  Parma,  he 
foreshortened  the  figures  so  violently  that 
almost  nothing  but  legs  are  seen ;  and  it  was 
said  jestingly  that  he  had  painted  "a  hash 
of  frogs. ' ' 

Correggio's  principal  works  are  at  Parma. 


among  his  most  beautiful  works.  Kugler 
says  about  these:  "On  the  principal  wall  is 
Diana  returning  from  the  chase,  in  a  car 
drawn  by  white  stags;  the  light  drapery  of 
the  goddess  conceals  but  little  of  her  per- 
fect and  youthful  form.  On  the  ceiling  is 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


395 


painted  a  vine-arbor, 
with  sixteen  oval 
openings,  in  which 
are  charming  groups 
of  genii,  some  with 
attributes  of  the 
chase,  —  horns, 
hounds,  the  head  of 
a  stag,  etc.  ;  some 
caress  each  other, 
some  pluck  fruits 
from  the  borders  of 
the  arbor.  It  is  im- 
possible to  conceive 
more  graceful,  at- 
tractive gaiety  than 
in  the  figures  of  these 
genii.  Underneath 
are  sixteen  lunettes 
in  chiaroscuro,  filled 
also  with  mythical 
subjects— the  Graces, 
Fortune,  the  Fates, 
Satyrs,  etc.  The 
choice  of  these  sub- 
jects for  a  convent 
appears  strange;  but 
in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury the  nuns  of 
Italy  enjoyed  the 
greatest  freedom, 
without  being  shut 
up,  while  the  abbess 
lived  in  princely 
splendor  and  luxu- 
ry." 

Correggio's  easel  pictures  are  spread  all 
over  the  world  in  various  galleries.  The 
Marriage  of  St.  Catherine,  in  the  Louvre,  is 
a  beautiful  example  of  his  composition  by 
lights  and  darks  rather  than  by  line.  What 
a  masterful  arrangement  of  spots,  what  a 
beautiful  glimmer  and  caress  of  lights, 
what  an  exquisite  transparency  of  shadows 
and  roundness  of  form !  There  is  over  it  all 
a  feeling  like  a  song  of  spring,  joyous,  but 
gentle,  graceful,  tender  and  sweet.  It  is 
one  of  the  sweetest  lyrics  of  the  world. 

The  La  Notte,  in  the  Dresden  Gallery,  is 
perhaps  better  known  than  any  other  of  his 
pictures,  and  has  been  classed  with  the  so- 
called  twelve  pictures  of  the  world.  There 


LA   NOTTK,    OR    THE    HOLY    NIGHT.       CORREGGIO. 


is  a  most  astounding  mastery  of  the  effect  of 
light  in  this  picture,  a  light  unearthly  in 
its  sweetness  and  brightness  as  it  emanates 
from  the  figure  of  the  Christ  child.  Correg- 
gio's joyousness  of  spirit  comes  out  to  the 
full  here  in  the  radiant  joy  and  love  of  the 
mother,  in  the  eager,  gladsome  shepherds, 
and  in  the  face  of  the  young  girl  who 
shields  her  eyes  from  the  dazzling  glory 
shining  from  the  figure  of  the  child.  There 
is  the  most  wonderful  management  of  values 
in  this  picture;  how  deep  the  gloom  in  the 
shadows  and  still  how  transparent;  how  all- 
enveloping  the  atmosphere,  and  how  soft  the 
light  of  the  new-born  day  just  faintly  light- 
ing up  the  horizon!  There  is  the  most  won- 


396 


PAINTING: 


derful  contrast  of  brilliancy  and  depth  here, 
of  soft  tenderness  of  half-tones  and  tremu- 
lous light,  with  the  effulgence  which  centers 
around  the  mother  and  child.  The  whole  is 
a  beautiful  song  of  gladness  over  the  prom- 
ised child. 

It  was  a  popular  tradition  that  Correggio 
lived  and  died  poor  and  unappreciated ;  but 
later  investigations  have  disproved  this,  and 
the  poetic  tale  of  his  death  is  no  longer 
credited. 

Correggio  had  a  number  of  followers,  but 
what  had  proved  the  rule  with  Michel- 
angelo's and  Raphael's  followers  did  not 
fail  here.  The  method  and  the  externals 
were  seized  upon,  whereas  the  spirit  was 
entirely  passed  by.  Correggio's  son,  Pom- 
ponio  Allegri  was  a  painter  of  some  merit, 
but  he  fell  entirely  below  his  father's 
level. 

Parmigianino  (1504-1540),  whose  real 
name  was  Francesco  Mazzola,  or  Mazzuoli, 
was  Correggio's  best  follower.  He  tried  to 
combine  the  grace  and  soft  charm  of  Cor- 
regio  with  the  grandeur  of  Florentine  line 
and  the  attempt,as  might  be  expected,  proved 
a  failure.  Imitation  brings  mannerisms  and 
Parmigianino  was  unpleasantly  mannered. 
The  Madonna  of  the  Long  Neck,  in  the  Pitti 
Gallery,  is  a  good  example  of  his  mannered 
style.  All  members  of  the  body  have  been 
so  elongated  to  obtain  grace  that  the  figure 
appears  pulled  out  of  shape,  and  there  is  an 
attempt  at  the  grand  which  ends  in  feeble- 
ness. There  are  still  touches  of  real  charm 
in  Parmigianino's  work,  as  in  the  Cupid 
Framing  His  Bow,  in  the  Gallery  at  Vienna; 
and  in  his  Moses  Breaking  the  Tables  of  the 
Law,  in  the  Santa  Maria  della  Steccata,  he 
strikes  a  note  of  real  grandeur. 


V 


ENETIAN 
GIONE.(io) 


SCHOOL  :     GIOR- 


The  Venetian  School,  which  added 
the  last  great  element — color — to 
Italian  art,  continued  the  impulse  of  the 
High  Renaissance  longer  than  did  the  other 
schools.  Decadence  set  in  less  rapidly  with 
them,  and  the  last  really  great  masters  were 
Venetians.  The  art  motive  of  Correggio 


was  also  that  of  the  Venetians.  With  them 
it  was  truly  art  for  art's  sake  in  the  highest 
meaning  of  the  word.  Although  a  sensuous 
art,  it  was  noble,  stately  and  dignified. 
Nature  to  the  Venetians  rang  with  sym- 
phonic harmonies,  and  although  the  gran- 
deur of  line  of  the  Florentines  was  not 
theirs,  they  built  up  vast  and  grand  color 
harmonies  that  hold  one  with  the  power  of 
a  mighty  orchestra.  It  is  the  Venetian  love 
of  the  sensuous,  of  the  beauties  of  nature 
that  made  landscape  so  prominent  a  feature 
of  their  painting,  and  they  carried  landscape 
to  a  greater  height  than  ever  before  in 
Italian  art.  There  was  no  particular 
idealization  about  the  Venetian  painters, 
they  took  nature  around  them  as  it  was; 
but  how  they  succeed  in  endowing  it  with 
absorbing  interest  and  beauty!  It  is  the 
grand,  the  noble  and  the  dignified  of  our 
world  as  it  is  that  they  portray  with  con- 
summate skill. 

Giorgione  (i477?-i5ii)  was  a  painter 
whose  influence  over  his  contemporaries 
and  followers  was  greater  than  that  of  any 
other  Venetian.  There  are  very  few 
authentic  pictures  by  him,  but  even  without 
them  his  influence  would  have  made  his 
name  great  in  art.  He  was  a  fellow  pupil 
with  Titian  under  Giovanni  Bellini,  but 
Giorgione  shaped  Titian's  art  more  than  did 
Bellini  himself.  A  noble,  serious  sentiment 
and  rich,  glowing,  intense  color  distinguish 
Giorgione's  work.  He  was  the  first  Italian 
to  select  subjects  of  the  every-day  world 
about  him.  Up  to  his  time  subjects  had  been 
rather  removed  from  ordinary  life — Madon- 
nas, Saints,  etc. ;  but  Giorgione  took  the 
every-day,  the  common,  and  made  it  dig- 
nified and  noble.  Giorgione  treated  nature 
in  its  broad,  simple  masses,  and  always 
sacrificed  detail  to  such  mass  and  general 
effect.  In  landscape  he  went  far  beyond  his 
master,  Bellini,  and  he  always  succeeds  in 
imparting  the  mood  of  the  scene  represented 
into  the  landscape  background.  His  com- 
positions are  very  simple;  few  figures, 
usually  two  or  three,  suffice  for  him,  but 
with  these  simple  means  he  succeeds  in  im- 
parting his  moods  and  feelings  and  creating 
works  that  are  of  strong  and  enduring 
interest. 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


397 


Giorgione  created  a  class  of  subjects  in 
painting  that  have  been  likened  to  lyrics 
and  pastorals  in  poetry.  There  is  a  pic- 
ture in  the  Louvre,  the  so-called  Concert 
Champetre,  which,  although  denied  by  some 
to  Giorgione,  serves  as  a  good  example  of 
these  subjects.  There  is  a  full  sensuous 
quality  in  this  pictuie,  noble, 
grand  masses  of  trees,  long 
vistas  of  landscape,  in  the  fore- 
ground beautiful  forms  that 
are  rounded  and  modeled  with 
softness  and  glow  of  flesh, 
soft,  transparent  shadows  and 
enveloping  atmosphere;  but  it 
is  a  grand,  noble  mood  of  na- 
ture, a  lofty  feeling  expressed 
through  the  mere  sensuous. 

Giorgione  painted  historical 
subjects,  mostly  in  fresco ;  but 
they  are  nearly  all  ruined,  most 
of  them  having  been  painted  on 
the  outside  of  buildings. 

In  portraiture  Giorgione  is 
simply  magnificent.  With  all 
their  lifelike  quality,  with  all 
their  closeness  to  nature,  which 
makes  one  feel  that  they  are 
pictures  of  actualities,  of  peo- 
ple who  have  really  existed, 
there  is  a  nobility  in  these  por- 
traits, a  high  ideal  quality,  that 
places  them  far  above  the  com- 
mon. Through  them  all  we 
feel,  besides  these  qualities, 
Giorgione 's  personality,  his 
temperament.  The  portrait  of 
General  Gattamelata,  for  instance.  What  a 
powerfully  living  quality  in  it,  what  strength 
of  modeling,  what  close  rendering  of  tex- 
tures, and  what  careful  following  of  the 
values  of  the  sheen  on  the  armor!  But 
also  what  nobility  of  spirit  it  breathes,  how 
powerfully  it  holds  our  attention  and  inter- 
ests us! 

Sometimes  Giorgione  would  make  ideal 
compositions  out  of  portraits,  and  a  favorite 
subject  of  this  kind  would  be  a  Concert. 
The  Concert,  in  the  Pitti  Gallery,  Florence, 
is  perhaps  the  finest  of  this  sort  of  pictures. 
There  is  the  same  quality  of  living  reality, 
the  same  fineness  of  modeling,  the  same 


seriousness  of  mood.  Here  we  see  a  cserol 
rendering  of  textures,  too,  than  had  ever 
before  been  known  in  Italian  art.  The  im- 
pression left  on  one  by  Giorgione's  pictures 
is  very  strong.  One  feels  that  one  has  been 
before  something  real,  something  of  life  and 
blood ;  but  it  is  a  grand,  noble  reality. 


PORTRAIT    OF    GENERAL    GATTAMELATA.       GIORGIONE. 


V 


ENETIAN     SCHOOL:     TITIAN. 


Titian  (1477-1576)  is  the  last  of  the 
quartet  of  the  world's  painters; 
and  as  a  painter  pure  and  simple,  in  the 
matter  of  presenting  nature,  in  his  mastery 
of  color,  in  his  sure,  strong  brushwork,  in 
his  ability  to  keep  a  composition  a  unit,  in 
fact,  in  all  those  things  that  go  to  make  a 
purely  pictorial  effect,  he  probably  stands  at 
the  head  of  them  all.  It  is  the  dignity  and 
grandeur  of  human  existence  that  Titian 
presents  to  us.  In  Correggio  was  the  life 
and  joy  and  vivacity  of  nature;  in  Titian 


39$ 


PAINTING: 


the  grand,  the  magnificent,  the  sublimely 
sensuous.  He  builds  up  masses  and  spaces 
and  forms  in  his  pictures  that  have  the 
grandeur  and  power  of  mountain  ranges. 
Titian  does  not  appeal  directly  to  our 
,  reasoning  powers  any  more  than  does  the 
vibrating  blue  of  sky,  or  a  smiling  meadow, 
or  a  glorious  sunset,  or  towering  mountain 
range;  but  he  makes  us  feel  the  grand  and 
sublime  in  nature,  and  reaches  our  intellect 
through  our  feelings.  Everything  Titian 
touches  with  his  magic  brush  glows  with 
wonderful  hues,  and  takes  on  an  exalted 
mood.  His  choice  of  subjects  was  wide — 
the  religious,  historical,  mythological  and 
allegorical  were  all  treated  by  him.  Land- 
scape he  treated  with  consummate  grandeur, 
and  his  influence  in  this  respect  lived  on  in 
Nicolas  Poussin  and  Claude  Lorraine.  In 
portraiture  he  was  perhaps  the  greatest 
painter  that  ever  lived. 

Titian  was  born  in  the  Valley  of  Cadore, 
a  place  full  of  grandeur  in  mountain  and 
forest;  and  the  impress  of  nature  around 
him  during  his  youth — and  in  repeated  visits 
— is  seen  in  all  his  succeeding  work.  There 
is  a  story  of  this  early  youth  of  Titian  which 
characterizes  the  trend  of  his  whole  life  in 
art.  .  It  is  said  that,  whereas  other  painters 
began  in  early  youth  by  drawing  in  char- 
coal or  on  a  slate,  he  pressed  the  juices  out 
of  certain  flowers  and  painted  with  them. 
Thus  early  did  he  indicate  his  position  as 
the  greatest  colorist  the  world  has  ever  seen. 

Titian  began  his  studies  in  art  at  the  age 
of  ten,  when  he  was  placed  under  Zuccato, 
a  painter  and  worker  in  mosaics;  but  later 
he  became  a  fellow  pupil  of  Griorgione  under 
Giovanni  Bellini.  Titian's  earliest  work 
shows  Bellini's  influence  in  his  mode  of 
composition,  but  he  became  still  more  influ- 
enced by  Giorgione.  When  Titian  and 
Giorgione  were  youths  of  about  eighteen  or 
nineteen  they  worked  together  on  the  fres- 
coes of  the  Fondaco  dei  Tedeschi;  but  a 
preference  shown  for  Titian's  work  caused 
an  estrangement  between  the  two  friends. 
For  several  years  after,  however,  the  influ- 
ence of  Giorgione  on  the  mind  and  style  of 
Titian  was  so  great  that  it  is  hard  to  tell 
their  work  apart,  and  on  the  early  death  of 
Giorgione,  Titian  was  commissioned  to  com- 


plete his  unfinished  pictures.  But  Titian's 
style  was  not  long  in  forming  itself,  and  he 
was  famous  before  the  age  of  thirty. 

From  middle  life  on  Titian  lived  in 
princely  style,  surrounded  by  friends — 
philosophers  and  poets — ;  and  honors  and 
commissions  flowed  to  him  from  all  sides. 
He  was  considered  the  greatest  portrait 
painter  living,  and  there  was  not  a  prince  or 
potentate,  a  poet  or  beauty,  who  did  not 
wish  to  have  him  paint  his  or  her  portrait. 
Titian  loved  pleasure,  and  has  often  been 
reproached  for  his  intimacy  with  the  "witty 
profligate  Pietro  Aretino" ;  but  he  never 
flagged  in  his  industry,  and  his  powers  were 
undimmed  at  an  age  when  most  men  would 
be  too  feeble  for  any  effort. 

Titian  has  often  been  accused  of  lack  in 
drawing;  but  no  one  seeing  his  Sacred  and 
Profane  Love,  in  the  Borghese  Gallery, 
would  agree  with  the  fault-finders.  (See 
the  cut,  p.  67.)  The  nude  figure  in  that 
picture  is  most  exquisite  in  pose  and  line 
and  modeling.  It  is  a  marvelous  feat  of 
rendering  modeling  in  full  light.  Full 
light  as  well  as  full  shadow  obliterates 
modeling  to  a  great  extent,  and  roundness 
and  form  are  felt  more  than  actually  seen. 
But  in  this  figure  the  modeling  is  as  truly 
given  as  though  it  had  been  marked  by  the 
strongest  contrast  of  light  and  shade.  What 
a  beautiful  glow  of  flesh  too,  and  what  soft- 
ness of  texture!  It  is  beautiful,  too,  in  its 
decorative  element,  this  picture.  The 
masses  of  dark  foliage  and  light  draperies 
and  the  flesh  of  figures  are  most  happily 
placed.  There  is  a  richness  and  depth  and 
glow  altogether  charming,  and  there  is  be- 
sides the  grand  feeling  so  characteristic  of 
Titian.  To  be  sure,  Titian's  drawing  be- 
comes looser  in  later  life,  but  then  he  draws 
more  by  mass  than  by  line. 

During  Diirer's  visit  to  Venice,  it  was 
perhaps  inevitable  that  comparisons  should 
be  made  between  his  work  and  Titian's. 
Italy  had  gone  wild  over  Diirer,  who  in 
technique  was  the  opposite  of  Titian.  Diirer 
carried  detail  to  excess,  and  spent  as  much 
time  over  a  curl  of  hair  as  over  any  other 
part  of  a  picture.  Titian  painted  in  broad 
masses.  It  was  in  a  way  to  show  that  he 
could  paint  detail  if  he  chose  that  Titian 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITALY. 


399 


painted  the  famous 
Christ  and  the  Tri- 
bute Money,  now  in 
the  Dresden  Gallery. 
But  what  a  differ- 
ence in  result!  Al- 
though everything  is 
painted  with  the 
most  minute  care, 
everything  counts  in 
mass.  What  a  careful 
rendering  of  dome  of 
head,  of  soft  wrinkled 
flesh,  of  brown  sin- 
ewy hand  in  the 
Pharisee !  And  then 
the  fairness  of  skin 
in  the  Christ-face, 
the  delicacy  of  line 
and  the  softness  of 
modeling!  The  hair 
lies  so  lightly  and 
easily  on  the  head 
that  one  might  any 
moment  expect  it  to 
move.  The  manage- 
ment of  values  is  su- 
perb as  they  range 
over  the  fair  form 
of  Christ  to  the  dark 
one  of  the  Pharisee. 
What  a  strong  ren- 
dering of  character 
too  in  the  gentle  but 
penetrating  glance  of 

Christ  and  the  crafty  expression  of  the  hard- 
ened Pharisee!  Then,  although  every  inch 
of  the  picture  is  well  painted  and  full  of 
interest,  how  well  the  attention  is  centered 
on  the  expressive  head  of  Christ!  "This 
wonderful  work  is  expressive  in  every  de- 
tail; the  action  of  the  hands  supplies  the 
place  of  words. " 

In  his  religious  pictures  in  general  Titian 
does  not  show  that  spirituality  which  marks 
the  works  of  some  painters  of  the  Renais- 
sance, Francia's  for  instance.  Still  they  are 
marked  by  a  nobility,  a  grandeur  and  dig- 
nity that  make  them  truly  impressive.  In 
the  Dresden  Gallery,  the  Virgin,  Child  and 
Saints  is  a  magnificent  example  of  grandeur 
of  form  and  mass.  Another  religious  picture 


TRIBUTE    MONEY.       TITIAN. 


of  grandeur  in  composition  is  the  Madonna 
with  Several  Saints  and  the  Pesaro  Family  as 
Donors,  in  the  S.  Maria  dei  Frari  at  Venice. 
Perhaps  the  best  known  of  his  religious 
pictures  are  the  Presentation  of  the  Virgin, 
in  the  Academy  at  Venice;  the  Entomb- 
ment, in  the  Louvre;  and  the  Assumption 
of  the  Virgin,  in  the  Academy  of  Venice. 
Of  the  Presentation  of  the  Virgin  in  the 
Temple  (see  the  cut,  p.  39),  Kugler  says: 
"This  great  picture  is  of  a  cheerful,  worldly 
character.  A  crowd  of  figures,  among 
whom  are  the  senators  and  procurators  of 
St.  Mark's,  are  looking  on  in  astonishment 
and  excitement  while  the  lovely  child,  hold- 
ing its  little  blue  garment  daintily  in  its 
right  hand,  is  ascending  the  steps  of  the 


400 


PAINTING: 


Temple,  where  the  astonished  high  priest, 
attended  by  a  Levite,  is  receiving  her  with  a 
benediction.  The  scene  is  rendered  with 
great  naivete,  and  with  an  incomparable 
glow  of  color."  One  cannot  help  feeling 
in  the  picture,  however,  that  the  subject  is 
belittled  by  the  surroundings.  The  stone 
steps,  for  instance,  are  too  uninteresting  to 


ASSUMPTION    OF    THE    VIRGIN.         TITIAN. 


occupy  so  large  a  space  in  the  composition, 
and  the  little  figure  of  the  Virgin  is  almost 
lost  in  the  splendor  of  the  architecture  be- 
hind her  and  the  massiveness  of  the  steps 
upon  which  she  stands. 

The  Entombment,  however,  is  one  of  the 
most  complete  and  perfect  pictorial  compo- 
sitions in  the  world.  In  the  perfect  dispo- 


sition and  balance  of  line  and  masses;  in  the 
beauty  of  light  and  shade  and  color  and 
atmosphere;  in  the  rendering  of  texture  and 
the  modeling;  in  fact,  in  all  those  things 
which  go  to  make  a  perfect  pictorial  effect, 
this  picture  is  superb.  Then,  above  all,  the 
scene  is  rendered  with  such  sure  dramatic 
instinct — there  is  nothing  theatrical  or  forced 
about  it,  all  is  so  truly  dignified  and  noble 
in  its  strong  emotion  and  action — that  one 
need  not  wonder  that  this  picture  greatly 
influenced  succeeding  art.  It  is  surely  one 
of  Titian's  greatest  efforts. 

The  Assumption  has  been  placed  as  one 
of  the  twelve  pictures  of  the  world,  and  it 
deservedly  holds  a  high  rank.  The  noble, 
beautifully  powerful  figure  of  the  Virgin,  as 
it  is  impelled  upward  surrounded  by  angels, 
the  agitated  group  of  disciples  and  apostles 
beneath,  the  swimming  glorious  light  in 
which  the  All  Father  soars,  and  the  beauty 
and  grace  of  the  glorifying  angels  are  all 
given  with  incomparable  power. 

Titian's  portraits  are  wonderful  in  close 
characterization  of  personality.  The  cun- 
ning fox-like  face  and  bent  form  of  his 
portrait  of  Pope  Paul  III.  is  an  instance. 
Where  his  subjects  will  allow,  he  endows 
t:iem  with  a  courtly  dignity  and  high  breed- 
ing, as  for  instance  his  Catherine  Cornaro, 
in  the  Uffizi,  and  the  famous  Donna  Bella, 
iii  the  Pitti  Gallery.  These  show  a  wonder- 
ful rendering  of  textures  and  management 
of  light  and  shade,  and  they  look  out  at  us 
from  the  canvas  with  a  stately,  dignified 
life,  The  Young  Man  with  the  Glove,  in  the 
Louvre,  is  remarkable  for  depth  of  feeling 
and  an  intensely  felt  personality.  Titian 
also  painted  allegorical  figures  which  appear 
to  have  been  portraits.  The  well-known 
Flora,  in  the  Uffizi,  is  an  example  of  this. 
It  is  a  wonderful  rendering  of  soft,  living 
flesh  and  rounded  form,  of  shining  curls  of 
hair  and  rich  drapery;  and  there  is  a  depth 
and  dignity  about  it  altogether  charming. 

Titian  painted  several  pictures  of  Emperor 
Charles  V.  It  was  while  painting  one  of  these 
portraits  at  Augsburg  that  the  incident 
occurred  which  has  been  so  often  related. 
Titian  was  then  seventy  years  old.  He  is 
said  to  have  dropped  his  brush,  whereupon 
Charles  picked  it  up  and  presented  it  to  the 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITALY. 


401 


ENTOMBMENT    OF    CHRIST.       TITIAN. 


painter,  who  made  many  excuses;  but 
Charles  replied  that  "Titian  was  worthy  of 
being  served  by  Caesar. "  When  at  Augs- 
burg, Titian  was  ennobled  and  created  a 
count  of  the  empire,  with  a  pension  of  two 
hundred  gold  ducats. 

Titian's  powers  did  not  seem  to  dim  even 
in  very  old  age.  He  was  eighty-one  when 
he  painted  the  Martyrdom  of  St.  Lawrence, 
one  of  his  largest  and  grandest  composi- 
tions. He  lived  to  be  ninety-nine  years  old, 
and  it  was  only  in  his  nineties  that  he 
showed  any  sign  of  declining  power,  and  as 
Mrs.  Jameson  says: 

"And  then  it  seemed  as  if  sorrow  rather 
than  time  had  reached  him  and  conquered  him 
at  last.  He  had  lost  his  daughter  Lavina,who 
had  been  his  model  for  many  beautiful  pic- 
tures. The  death  of  many  friends,  the  com- 
panions of  his  convivial  hours,  left  him  'alone 
in  his  glory, '  and  he  found  in  his  beloved  art 
the  only  refuge  from  grief.  His  son  Pomponio 
was  still  the  same  worthless  profligate  in 
age  that  he  had  been  in  youth;  his  son 


Orazio  attended  upon  him  with  truly  filial 
duty  and  affection,  and  under  his  father's 
tuition  became  an  accomplished  artist ;  .  .  . 
The  early  morning  and  the  evening  hour 
found  him  at  his  easel ;  or  lingering  in  his 
little  garden  (where  he  had  feasted  with 
Aretino  and  Sansovino,  and  Bembo  and 
Ariosto,  and  'the  most  gracious  Virginia' and 
'the  most  beautiful  Violante'),  and  gazing 
on  the  setting  sun,  with  a  thought  perhaps 
of  his  own  long  and  bright  career  fast 
hastening  to  its  close;  not  that  such  antici- 
pations clouded  his  cheerful  spirit — buoyant 
to  the  last!" 

In  1575  the  plague  struck  Venice,  and  in 
1576  the  great  master  was  stricken  with  it 
and  died.  The  sanitary  laws  forbade  burial 
in  churches  during  the  plague,  but  the  Vene- 
tian veneration  for  the  grand  master  was  so 
great  that  these  were  set  aside,  and  his  le- 
mains  were  borne  to  the  tomb  with  great 
honors  and  deposited  in  the  church  of  S. 
Maria  dei  Frari,  for  which  he  had  painted  his 
famous  Assumption. 


402 


PAINTING: 


V 


ENETIAN    SCHOOL:     TINTO- 
RETTO. (12) 


Tintoretto  (1518-1592)  is  the  third 
of  the  four  great  Venetians,  and 
he  is  the  boldest,  the  most  assured  and  head- 
long painter  known  to  the  world.  He  was 
called  "11  Furioso"  by  his  contemporaries, 
for  the  passionate,  fiery  style  which  marks 
his  work.  It  is  because  of  his  being  such  a 
passionate,  fiery  genius  that  his  work  is  so 
uneven.  At  times  he  is  so  hasty,  so  anxious 
to  work  out  his  ideas,  that  he  falls  short,  his 
work  is  lax,  is  ill-considered  and  wild  in 
composition;  but  at  other  times  he  soars  to 
the  height  of  the  greatest  masters.  It  is 
because  of  these  inequalities  that  he  has 
been  so  variously  estimated.  Some  have 
exalted  him  to  the  skies,  others  again  have 
refused  to  grant  him  any  honor.  Vasari, 
for  instance,  says  that  he  executed  his  pic- 
tures haphazaid,  without  design;  while 
Ruskin  classes  him  with  Michelangelo. 
Tintoretto's  motto  was  "the  line  of  Michel 
angelo  with  the  color  of  Titian,"  and  he 
almost  accomplished  his  ideal  in  some  of  his 
pictures.  Compared  to  Titian,  Tintoretto  has 
not  magnificent  calm  dignity  and  grandeur; 
but  his  work  has  more  action  and  force. 
Some  of  his  figures  are  tremendous  in  their 
passionate  energy,  their  impetuous  and 
headlong  rush. 

Tintoretto,  or  Jacobo  Robusti,  was  born 
in  the  city  of  Venice  proper.  His  father 
was  a  dyer,  and  it  was  from  his  father's 
occupation  (tintore)  that  he  received  the 
name  by  which  he  is  known  in  art.  He  be- 
gan early  to  show  his  genius,  and  drew  and 
painted  figures  on  the  walls  of  his  father's 
house,  using  his  colors.  His  father  took 
him  to  Titian,  but  it  is  said  that  Titian  soon 
set  him  away  with  the  words  that  he  "would 
never  be  anything  but  a  dauber."  It  is 
notorious,  however,  that  Titian  made  a  bad 
teacher.  Probably  he  was  too  impatient 
and  believed  that  there  was  only  one  way  to 
art.  At  any  rate,  his  judgment  of  Tinto- 
retto's gifts  was  proved  erroneous  by  that 
painter's  later  works.  Tintoretto  had  a 
great  admiration  for  Titian,  and  it  was  a 
sore  disappointment  to  him  to  have  that 
master's  ill-will;  but  nothing  daunted  he  set 


out  for  himself  and  studied  day  and  night, 
for  he  was  a  most  indefatigable  student. 
Daniele  da  Volterra  had  made  some  small 
copies  of  Michelangelo's  figures  for  the 
Medici  Tomb — the  Day,  Night,  Dawn  and 
Twilight,  and  Tintoretto  having  obtained 
these  small  models  from  Florence,  made 
them  the  subject  of  unceasing  study.  Un- 
like Michelangelo's  other  followers,  how- 
ever, Tintoretto  did  not  become  a  mere 
mechanical  copyist.  It  is  to  this  study  of 
Michelangelo  that  he  owes  his  powerful 
form  and  the  swing  and  suggestive  force  of 
his  line. 

Tintoretto  met  with  much  disappointment 
and  many  slights  in  early  life.  Titian,  who 
was  entrusted  with  the  apportioning  of  pub- 
lic work  among  the  painters  of  Venice,  in- 
variably passed  by  Tintoretto;  and  so  we 
find  that  young  master,  in  order  to  break 
a  way  for  himself,  often  undertaking  to  do 
great  works  without  remuneration.  But 
success  came  in  the  end. 

Tintoretto's  productive  power  was  prodi- 
gious. After  fires  and  thefts  and  all  sorts  of 
vicissitudes  a  vast  number  of  his  pictures 
still  exists  in  Venice,  and  it  is  there  he 
should  be  studied  to  be  really  appreciated. 

In  the  Scuola  di  San  Rocco  are  fifty-seven 
large  pictures  by  him  of  which  the  Cruci- 
fixion is  the  most  noted.  This  illustrates  to 
the  full  his  passionate,  fiery  style,  his  bold 
action  and  his  teeming  inventive  fancy.  It 
is  tremendously  tragic,  with  its  powerful 
contrast  of  the  fierceness  and  brutality  of 
the  executioners,  the  haughty  indifference 
of  some  of  the  high  personages  witnessing 
the  scene,  and  the  helpless  grief  and  faint- 
ing despair  of  the  sorrowing  followers.  In 
drawing  he  proved  himself  more  daring  and 
inventive  than  the  rest  of  the  Venetians, 
the  bold  foreshortening  and  strong  action  of 
some  of  the  figures  being  most  powerfully 
given.  The  tragic,  the  fierce,  pervades  the 
whole  picture  from  the  agitated  groups  to 
the  threatening  sky  and  storm-tossed  trees. 

But  Tintoretto  is  also  a  master  of  grace 
among  the  best.  What,  for  instance,  could 
be  more  graceful  in  form,  line  and  gesture 
than  his  Marriage  of  Ariadne  and  Bacchus, 
in  the  Ducal  Palace  at  Venice?  This  com- 
position is  singularly  beautiful  in  arrange- 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITAL  Y. 


4°3 


ment  of  line  and  light  and  shade,  and  is 
filled  with  the  most  exquisite  rhythm. 
There  are  twenty-three  of  his  works  in  this 
same  Ducal  Palace,  and  among  these  the  Par- 
adise, a  canvas  thirty  by  seventy-four  feet, 
is  the  largest  oil  painting  in  the  world. 

In  the  S.  Maria  dell'  Orto,  Venice,  are  also 
several  pictures,  among  them  the  Last  Judg- 
ment, so  highly  praised  by  Ruskin ;  and  the 
Presentation  of  the  Virgin,  which,  it  is  said, 
he  painted  in  direct  competition  with  Titian, 
and  which  in  the  matter  of  composition 
seems  better  held  together  than  that  of 
Titian,  although  not  so 
gracious  in  sentiment 
and  of  far  less  cheer- 
fulness of  aspect.  In 
the  Academy  of  Venice 
is  found  the  Miracle  of 
St.  Mark,  which  is  by 
many  reckoned  his  mas- 
terpiece. This  is  a  pic- 
ture of  rich  coloring, 
strong  drawing  and 
great  dramatic  interest. 
Tintoretto's  portraits 
are  among  the  best. 
These  he  treated  with 
the  dignity  and  breadth 
of  Titian. 

His  daughter  Mariet- 
ta was  also  a  portrait 
painter  of  note.  She 
died  at  the  age  of  thirty, 
to  the  great  grief  of  the 
father,  who,  it  is  said, 
"painted  the  calm  rem- 
nant of  his  beautiful 
daughter  as  she  lay 

dead."  Two  years  after  Tintoretto  died 
and  was  buried  in  the  S.  Maria  dell' 
Orto. 


Venetian  love  of  magnificence,  pomp  and 
glory  he  carried  out  to  its  fullest  scope,  and 
it  is  only  his  genius  that  prevents  his  work 
from  being  a  simple  display.  His  art  was 
very  near  the  toppling-over  line;  it  had  the 
germs  of  decadence  in  it,  without  belonging 
to  the  decadent  art.  There  is  a  strong  deco- 
rative element  in  Veronese's  work,  a  deco- 
ration of  the  peculiarly  rich  magnificent 
Venetian  kind.  Glittering  stuffs,  jewels, 
armor,  silks,  and  tremendous,  magnificent 
architecture,  glowing  brilliant  color,  and 
richness  of  robe  are  combined  with  a  ren- 


V 


ENETIAN  SCHOOL:  VERO- 
NESE, PALMA  AND  OTHERS. 
PAINTERS  OF  BRESCIA  AND 
VERONA.(i3) 


Paolo  Veronese  (1528-1588)  was  the  last  of 
the  four  great  Venetians.  He  did  not  fol- 
low Tintoretto  in  the  matter  of  line.  The 


ARIADNE    AND    BACCHUS.       TINTORETTO. 


dering  of  life  varied,  rich,  active,  full  of 
energy  and  motion.  These  were  the  things, 
magnificent  decorative  schemes,  that  Vero- 
nese cared  for;  the  subject  was  nothing  to 
him.  One  does  not  find  much  sentiment  in 
Veronese's  work.  Even'his  religious  pictures 
are  only  an  excuse  for  the  display  of  mag- 
nificence and  action.  It  is  a  shock  to  one's 
sense  of  the  fitting  or  proper  to  find  in  such 
a  subject  as  his  Annunciation,  in  the  Uffizt, 
the  Madonna  surrounded  by  magnificent, 
stately  columns,  and  the  angel  clad  in  glit- 
tering silks.  The  quiet,  intensely-felt  reli- 


404 


PAINTING: 


gious  sentiment  of  the  Early  Renaissance  is 
entirely  wanting. 

But  one  must  take  Veronese  for  what  he 
is  and  what  he  offers;  and  he  does  offer  a 
magnificent,  interesting  art.  .  His  peculiar 
powers  are  best  unfolded  in  banquet  scenes 
and  rich,  courtly  affairs.  As  such  he  has 
rendered  the  Marriage  Feast  at  Cana,  now 
in  the  Louvre,  perhaps  the  most  famous  of 
his  pictures,  a  canvas  600  square  feet  in  ex- 
tent and  containing  130  life-size  figures.  It 
presents  at  first  glance  a  bewildering  mass  of 
richly-clad,  magnificent  figures  in  animated 
and  varied  poses,  a  wondrously  rich  pile  of 
architecture,  and  a  mass  of  rich  color.  Air, 
space,  light,  textures  are  all  given  with  a 
master  hand,  and  there  is  not  an  inch  of  the 
vast  canvas  that  is  painted  in  an  uninterest- 
ing manner.  This  is  the  fullness  and  rich- 
ness of  sumptuous  Venetian  life,  a  panorama 
of  varied  and  interesting  human  beings,  and 
one  forgets  almost  that  it  is  supposed  to  be 
a  religious  picture,  until  one  sees  the  face 
and  form  of  the  Virgin  and  Christ  at  the 


table  in  the  middle  ground.  It  is  like  the 
rich  chords  of  stately,  festive  music. 

In  such  a  subject,  too,  as  the  famous  Rape 
of  Europa,  in  the  Ducal  Palace,  Venice, 
Veronese  is  at  his  best.  The  softness  of 
light  and  shade,  the  beautiful  radiance  of 
sky,  the  luxurious  magnificence  "of  rich 
robes  and  soft,  palpitating  flesh,  the  rich 
decorative  quality  of  landscape,  and  the 
touches  of  festive  joy  in  the  garlands  and 
wreaths  and  fruits  flung  down  by  the  little 
Cupids  induce  a  dream-like  mood,  the  luxur- 
ious feeling  of  a  summer's  day. 

In  the  Church  of  St.  Sebastian,  Venice,  is 
a  series  of  three  pictures  representing  scenes 
from  the  story  of  that  Saint.  The  finest  of 
these  is  the  picture  representing  the  com- 
panions of  St.  Sebastian,  Marcus  and  Mar- 
cellinus,  preparing  for  their  martyrdom,  and 
is  considered  by  many  Veronese's  master- 
piece. Kugler  says  of  this:  "This  picture 
displays  a  beauty  of  composition,  a  richness 
without  an  overcrowding  of  subject,  and  a 
power  of  expression  and  color  which  in  some 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITALY. 


4°5 


RAPE    OF    F.t'ROPA.       VERONESE. 


respects  entitle  it  to  be  considered  the 
noblest  of  Paul  Veronese's  works;"  and 
Mrs.  Jameson  says  that  this  picture  is  "for 
the  expression  of  life,  passion  and  dramatic 
power,  one  of  the  grandest  pictures  of  the 
world;  it  is  esteemed  the  masterpiece  of  the 
painter. ' ' 

These  four  painters,  Giorgione,  Titian, 
Tintoretto  and  Veronese,  are  the  greatest 
masters  of  the  Venetian  School ;  but  around 
them  and  with  them  stood  painters  that,  but 
for  the  age  in  which  they  lived,  would  be 
ranked  among  the  greatest  masters. 

Raima  il  Vecchio  (i48o?-i528)  is  one  of  the 
best  of  them,  a  man  of  a  gentle,  quiet  gran- 
deur in  his  pictures.  The  Adoration  of  the 
Shepherds,  in  the  Louvre,  is  marked  by  a 
more  devotional  feeling  than  is  the  wont  of 
Venetian  painters,  and  there  is  a  sweet, 
simple  dignity  about  it  both  in  composition 


and  sentiment.  It  has  besides  much  of 
Giorgione's  beauty  of  light  and  shade. 
That  painter's  influence  is  strongly  felt  in 
many  of  Palma's  pictures.  His  Reclining 
Venus,  for  instance,  in  the  Dresden  Gallery, 
is  marked  by  the  serious,  dignified,  sensuous 
charm  so  much  felt  in  Giorgione's  work. 
A  most  beautiful  figure  in  line  and  form, 
with  a  wonderful  quality  of  soft  flesh  and 
beautiful,  lustrous  hair,  all  set  off  against  a 
most  dreamy,  noble  landscape,  it  has  the 
depth  and  seriousness  of  Giorgione's  best 
creations.  Palma  was  essentially  the  creator 
of  grand,  stately,  dignified  female  forms. 
His  masterpiece,  the  St.  Barbara,  in  the 
Santa  Maria  Formosa,  Venice,  is  majestic  in 
mien  and  pose,  and  grand  in  its  cast  of 
drapery.  There  is  a  wonderful  power  and 
dignity  in  this  figure,  which  is  rightly  con- 
sidered one  of  the  grandest  figures  in  all  art. 


406 


PAINTING: 


RECLINING    VENUS.       PALMA    VECCHIO. 


Lorenzo  Lotto  (1480?- 15 56?)  was  Palma's 
fellow-worker  and  friend,  a  man  of  most 
sensitive  temperament.  His  Three  Ages  of 
Man,  for  instance,  in  the  Uffizi  Gallery, 
shows  a  wonderful  appreciation  of  the  subtle 
inner  feelings  or  emotions,  that  makes  one 
think  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  whom  he  is  also 
said  to  have  followed.  Lorenzo's  portraits 
are  almost  equal  to  Titian's.  Besides  these 
two  fellow -workers  in  the  Venetian  School, 
there  were  several  men  of  lesser  merit,  who 
should  be  mentioned. 

Rocco  Marconi  (fl.  1505-1520)  was  distin- 
guished principally  for  the 
glow  and  transparency  of  his 
color  and  for  the  high  quality 
of  his  landscapes.  He  is  a 
very  unequal  painter.  Some- 
times his  pictures  are  built  up 
in  a  soulless  fashion,  while 
again  he  comes  out  with  a 
great  deal  of  force  and  feel- 
ing, as  in  his  Descent  from  the 
Cross,  in  the  Academy  of  Ven- 
ice. 

Pordenone  (1483-1540),  a  fol- 
lower of  Giorgione,  made  a 
weak  attempt  at  competing 
with  Titian.  A  weakness  of 
action  and  dullness  of  senti- 
ment characterize  his  work ;  but 
it  is  also  marked  by  a  warmth 
and  mellowness  of  tone  which 
few  have  approached. 


Paris  Bordone  (1495- 
I57°)  was  a  painter  of 
marked  individuality. 
His  figures  are  gentle, 
graceful  and  aristocrat- 
ic, and  he  was  a  por- 
trait painter  of  the 
best. 

The  great  technical 
mastery  over  textures 
of  all  kinds  which  we 
have  seen  a  character- 
istic of  Venetian  paint- 
ing, would  lead  one  to 
expect  that  imitation 
of  natural  objects  would 
become  almost  an  end 
in  itself;  and  at  Bas- 

sano,  we  find  a  family  of  painters  who 
painted  almost  from  the  Dutch  point  of 
view.  These  were  the  members  of  the  Da 
Porte  family,  called  the  Bassanos  from  their 
native  town.  There  were  six  of  them,  and 
Jacopo  (1510-1592)  was  their  head.  He 
painted  religious  subjects  in  a  genre  style, 
introducing  into  them  animals  and  the 
scenery  around  his  home,  and  giving  them  a 
rural  character.  He  was  fond  of  still  life, 
and  very  often  introduced  it  into  rural 
scenes  together  with  cattle  and  sheep,  which 
he  painted  extremely  well. 


THRF.E    AGES    OF    MAN.       LORENZO    LOTTO. 


HIGH  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITALY. 


407 


Francesco  (1550-1591)  was  next  to  Jacopo 
the  most  prominent  of  this  family.  He 
painted  the  usual  sacred  subjects  in  the 
characteristic  Venetian  way.  The  whole 
family  is  distinguished  by  a  rich,  gem-like 
quality  of  color. 

There  was  another  family  of  artists  at  this 
time.  Bonifazio  I.,  called  Bonifazio  Vero- 
nese ( — ?-i54o),  Bonifazio  II.  ( — ?-i553),  and 
Bonifazio  III.,  called  Bonifazio  Veneziano 
( — ?-i57o)  are  all  from  a  Veronese  family, 
and  are  painters  of  some  note  in  the  Vene- 
tian School.  Especially  is  this  the  case 
with  Bonifazio  Veronese,  several  of  whose 
pictures  have  until  recently  been  attributed 
to  Palma  il  Vecchio  or  Titian. 

Venetian  art  extended  also  to  the  Vene- 
tian territories,  but  it  was  modified  there  by 
local  traits. 

Painters  of  Brescia  and  Verona. — Moretto 
(i498?-i555)  was  the  strongest  and  most 
original  of  these  painters.  He  was  a  native 
of  Brescia  and  worked  chiefly  in  that  city 
and  its  neighborhood.  He  did  the  almost 
impossible  thing  of  uniting  the  Venetian 
color  with  Florentine  severity  and  dignit)^. 
His  composition  was  noble  and  dignified, 
and  his  work  shows  great  directness  and 
simplicity.  His  color  was  more  silvery  than 
the  Venetian,  which  was  of  a  golden  hue, 
and  it  was  kept  in  beautiful  tone.  He  was 
a  painter  of  much  feeling  and  painted  reli- 
gious subjects  with  rare  dignity  and  a  devo- 
tional spirit.  His  portraits  are  very  strong, 
full  of  the  individuality  of  the  subject,  close 
in  drawing  and  modeling,  but  with  none  of 
the  larger  qualities  left  out.  They  are 
marked  by  a  great  dignity  and  nobility. 
His  pupil, 

Moroni  (fl.  1549-1578)  was  a  fine  portrait 
painter,  a  man  who  delights  us  with  his 
truly  modern  style  and  spirit.  There  is  a 
pleasing  air  of  life  and  reality  about  Ma- 
roni's  portraits,  an  entire  absence  of  pose 
and  affectation;  one  feels  the  presence 
almost  of  a  living  personality. 

At  Verona  Caroto  (1470-1546)  showed  a 
style  where  warm  and  well-blended  coloring 
was  combined  with  hard,  statue-like  severity 
of  drawing. 

(iirolamo  dai  Libri  (1474-1555)  belongs  in 
style  to  the  fifteenth  rather  than  the  six- 


teenth century.  He  was  a  miniaturist  as 
well  as  a  painter  of  altar-pieces.  Torbido 
(i486?-i546?)  was  a  painter  of  no  particular 
style  who  followed  many  masters,  at  one 
time  Giorgione,  then  Liberale  da  Verona, 
then  Bonifazio  Veronese,  and  finally  veered 
around  to  Giulio  Romano. 

Cavazzola  (1486-1522)  was  a  man  of  talent 
who  showed  more  originality.  There  are 
several  more  painters  in  the  several  Vene- 
tian territories,  but  they  are  not  important 


PORTRAIT   OF   A   TAILOR.       MORONI. 


when  compared  to  those    previously   men- 
tioned. 


D 


ECADENCE,  MANNERISTS, 
ECLECTICS  AND  NATURAL- 
ISTS. (14) 


The  mighty  art  impulse  of  Italy 
had  reached  its  climax  in  the  great  painters 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  had  spent  it- 
self in  them.  It  was  felt  that  the  last  word 
had  been  said,  and  so  there  was  nothing  left 
but  imitation  and  combination  of  various 


408 


PAINTING: 


excellences.  The  decline  set  in  last  at 
Venice,  not  till  after  1590;  but  in  the  cen- 
tral part  of  Italy  it  began  about  1540.  This 
imitation  and  weak  combination  of  styles 
was  simply  an  external  matter.  They  for- 
got, these  men  of  decline,  that  it  was  the 
spirit,  the  originality  and  the  temperament 
of  their  predecessors,  their  openness  to 
nature  and  their  originality  of  thought 
in  viewing  it,  that  had  made  them  great. 
They  saw  the  power  of  Michelangelo's 
work,  and  thought  it  consisted  in  muscu- 
lar development;  so  they  painted  figures 
whether  in  repose  or  in  action,  with  muscles 
standing  out  in  bunches  all  over  them. 
They  saw  the  grace  and  serene  majesty 
of  Raphael,  the  exquisite  grace  and  depth 
and  purity  of  Leonardo;  but  they  debased 
them  with  over-refinement,  weakness  and 
sentimentality.  In  like  manner  the  splen- 
didly healthy  realism  of  Venice  became 
simply  transcriptions  from  nature.  The 
taste  of  patrons  of  art  had  also  changed,  and 
this  proved  another  cause  of  decline  at  least 
equally  strong.  All  vied  for  the  possession 
of  enormous  and  showy  decorations,  heed- 
less of  the  hasty  or  careless  execution,  pro- 
vided they  were  large — and  cheap.  Vasari 
says,  and  he  indicates  the  spirit  of  the  times: 
"We  paint  six  pictures  in  one  year,  while 
the  earlier  masters  took  six  years  to  one;" 
and  adds  very  complacently,  "and  yet  these 
pictures  are  much  more  perfectly  executed 
than  those  of  the  early  school  by  the  most 
distinguished  masters."  The  technical 
power  was  still  so  great,  however,  that  in 
portraiture,  where  these  painters  were 
obliged  to  follow  their  own  point  of  view, 
the  results  were  still  fine.  It  was  the  man- 
nerisms which  resulted  from  this  imitation 
that  have  given  their  name  to  the  painters 
who  followed  Michelangelo  and  Raphael. 
At  Florence  the  imitation  of  Michelangelo 
became  the  first  object  of  the  painters. 

Agnolo  Bronzino  (1502?-! 5 7 2)  painted  cor- 
rect academic  figures  in  mannered  poses. 
His  best-known  picture,  Christ  in  Limbo,  is 
an  instance  of  this.  It  leaves  one  entirely 
unmoved.  His  coloring  is  usually  dull  and 
cold.  He  is  a  splendid  example,  however,  of 
how  the  mannerists  could  rise  to  real  excel- 
lence in  portraiture. 


Vasari  (1511-1574)  will  forever  be  famous 
for  his  lively  and  entertaining  historical 
work,  the  "Lives  of  the  Painters."  But  as  a 
painter  he  was  a  superficial  imitator  of 
Michelangelo,  supposing  that  his  excessive 
and  false  modeling,  his  heavy  and  lumber- 
ing forms,  and  his  grandiose  conceptions 
gave  the  grandeur  and  power  of  Michel- 
angelo's creations. 

Salviati  (1510-1563)  was  Vasari's  friend 
and  was  as  much  a  mannerist. 

Federigo  Zuccheri  (1543-1609)  was  a  man- 
nerist of  an  insipid,  smooth  style,  and  a 
painter  of  shallow  allegories.  Federigo 
painted  the  cupola  of  the  Duomo  of  Flor- 
ence, introducing  a  multitude  of  figures, 
some  colossal.  A  satire  of  the  day  shows 
what  they  are  worth.  It  concludes  with 
these  lines: 

"Poor  Florence,  alas!  will  ne'er  cease  to  complain 
Till  she  sees  her  fine  cupola  whitewashed  again." 

Baroccio  (1528-1612)  was  a  stronger  man 
than  his  contemporaries  and  showed  more 
power  and  fewer  mannerisms  than  they. 
One  of  his  principal  works  is  a  colossal 
Descent  from  the  Cross,  in  the  Cathedral  of 
Perugia,  and  is  distinguished  by  no  little 
grandeur. 

There  was  a  reaction  against  this  blind 
mannerism  by  the  Eclectic  School,  which 
was  formed  about  1585  by  the  Caracci  fam- 
ily. Their  aim  was  to  "revive  art"  by  com- 
bining into  one  style  the  excellences  of  all 
the  great  masters:  Angelo's  line,  Titian's 
color,  Correggio's  light  and  shade,  and  Ra- 
phael's symmetry  and  grace.  This  could 
but  result  in  failure;  "for  the  greatness  of 
the  earlier  masters  consisted  precisely  in 
their  individual  and  peculiar  qualities;  and 
to  endeavor  to  unite  characteristics  essen- 
tially different  at  once  implies  a  contradic- 
tion."  (Kugler.) 

There  were  five  of  the  Caracci,  but  three 
of  them,  Ludovico  (1555-1619),  Agostino 
(1557-1602)  and  Annibale  (1560-1609)  led  the 
school.  These  Caracci  saw  their  mistake 
later  in  life,  and  based  their  art  more  on 
nature ;  but  that  was  entirely  unheeded  by 
their  followers,  who  in  spirit  and  point  of 
time  belong  to  the  seventeenth  rather  than 
the  sixteenth  century.  Of  the  Caracci, 
Ludovico  was  more  teacher  than  painter, 


THE  RENAISSANCE  IN  SPAIN. 


409 


and  Agostino  also  was  more  of  a  theorist 
than  a  man  of  practice.  Annibale  was  by 
far  the  strongest  of  the  family.  The  series 
of  frescoes  in  the  Farnese  Palace  at  Rome  is 
considered  his  finest  work.  As  examples  of 
pure  technical  accomplishment  these  pic- 
tures can  hardly  be  surpassed,  but  they 
leave  one  cold.  The  pupils  and  followers 
of  the  Caracci  spread  all  over  Italy,  and 
their  influence  was  very  strong,  but  there 
was  very  little  originality  and 
spontaneity  about  their  work. 

In  distinct  opposition  to  the 
Eclectics  arose  the 

School  of  the  Naturalists  in 
Naples. — Nature  was  their  only 
model,  but  nature  of  only  the 
lowest  and  wildest  type.  True 
nature,  sane,  pure,  strong  and 
beautiful,  which  the  painters 
of  the  Early  and  High  Renais- 
sance had  set  for  their  ideal, 
these  naturalists  did  not  know 
or  care  for.  The  leader  and 
founder  of  the  school  was  Car- 
avaggio  (1569-1609),  and  he 
was  also  the  extreme  type  of 
the  school.  His  was  a  wild 
and  passionate  nature,  as  his 
work  shows.  It  is  strongly 
dramatic,  although  without  any 
elevation  of  feeling.  He  was 
a  strong  draughtsman  and  very 
often  good  in  color.  His  work 
has  a  tremendous  contrast  of 
light  and  dark,  and  his  pecul- 
iar dark  shadows  became  the 
earmark  of  the  whole  school. 
His  best  known  picture  is  the 
Entombment,  in  the  Vatican, 
Rome.  This  seems,  as  some 
one  has  suggested,  more  the 
funeral  of  a  gypsy  chief  than 
the  burial  of  Christ;  still  it  has  a  tragic 
power  all  its  own.  (See  page  410.) 

It  was  with  these  men  that  the  spirit  of 
the  seventeenth  century  painting  in  Italy 
began.  The  golden  age  of  art  in  Italy  had 
ceased,  the  mightiest  impulse  of  art  the 
world  had  seen  since  the  time  of  the  Greeks 
had  spent  itself,  perhaps  never  more  to 
appear  in  Italy.  But  its  influence  on  the 


art  of    the  world  can   never  be  fully  esti- 
mated. 


P 


AINTING:  THE   RENAISSANCE 
IN  SPAIN.(is) 


Spanish  painting  until  the  seven- 
teenth century  can  hardly  be  called 
an  original  art.     The  art  that  is  first  known 


PIETA.       ANNIBALE    CARACCI. 


is  plainly  derived  from  the  Italian,  besides 
showing  some  influence  of  the  Flemish.  In 
fact  very  little  is  known  about  Spanish 
painting  until  the  fourteenth  century.  It  is 
then  that  Italian  and  Flemish  influences 
begin  to  appear.  Stamina,  the  painter 
of  the  transition  period,  was  the  first  Italian 
to  appear  in  Spain.  A  little  later  came 
Dello  Fiorentino,  a  companion  of  Paolo 


PAINTING: 


ENTOMBMENT.       CARAVAGGIO. 

Uccello.  He  died  in  Spain  after  having 
lived  at  the  court  of  Juan  II.  of  Castile,  who 
held  him  in  great  esteem.  The  great  Flem- 
ish master,  Jan  van  Eyck,  also  visited  Spain 
1429.  Although  these  foreign  influences 
shaped  Spanish  art,  especially  in  its  meth- 
ods, there  was  a  decided  Spanish  spirit  in  it, 
a  dark,  gloomy,  morose  spirit,  full  of  horror, 
an  outgrowth  of  the  inquisition. 

Spanish  art  was  distinctly  a  church  art. 
The  inquisition  ruled  with  an  iron  hand  all 
representation,  and  the  Spaniards  were  only 
too  willing  to  be  ruled.  There  were  some 
portraits  and  genre  pictures  done;  but  until 
the  time  of  Velasquez,  the  great  bulk  of 
Spanish  art  was  religious.  The  nude  was 
strictly  forbidden  by  the  inquisition,  and 
the  censorship  went  so  far  as  to  dispute 


whether  an  artist  had  the  right 
to  paint  the  Savior  nailed  to 
the  cross  with  three  nails  or 
with  four.  It  was  a  rigid, 
gloomy,  religious  spirit  which 
ruled  Spain's  art  until  the 
seventeenth  century. 

There  are  three  schools  of 
painting  in  Spanish  art,  schools 
which  are  named  from  locali- 
ties rather  than  from  any  par- 
ticular tendency.  These  are 
the  Castilian,  the  Andalusian 
and  the  Valencian  schools. 

The  first  painter  of  note  in 
the  Castilian  School  seems  to 
have  been  Antonio  del  Rincon 
(1446?- 1 500?)  of  Toledo.  He 
has  been  called  the  father  of 
Spanish  painting,  and  was  court 
painter  to  Ferdinand  and  Isa- 
bella the  Catholic.  He  is  sup- 
posed to  have  studied  in  Flor- 
ence under  Andrea  del  Cas- 
tagno  and  Ghirlandajo.  Few 
of  his  works  remain. 

Alonzo  Berruguete  (i  480?- 
1561)  was  one  of  the  Spaniards 
to  do  most  to  introduce  Italian 
art    into    Spain.       He  studied 
under   Michelangelo    in    Italy, 
and  is  said  to  have  assisted  him 
on  his   cartoon  of    the   war  of 
Pisa.       His  paintings  are    said 
to    have    been     good   in    composition,   but 
somewhat     hard     and    cold    in    treatment. 
He    did    much,     however,    to    replace    the 
hard    angular    line    then    prevalent  by   the 
softer  and  more   rounded  line  of   the    Ital- 
ians.    Berruguete  was  a  sculptor  and  archi- 
tect as   well   as  a  painter. 

Caspar  Becerra  (1520-1570)  was  also  sculp- 
tor, painter  and  architect,  and  is  also  said  to 
have  studied  with  Michelangelo.  He  is 
classed  among  the  great  fresco  painters  of 
vSpain. 

Luis  de  Morales  (i509?-i586)  was  called 
the  "Divine"  by  his  countrymen.  Wornum 
says  of  him:  "He  may  be  termed  the 
Ludovico  Caracci  of  Spain,  as  regards  his 
color  and  light  and  shade;  in  design  and 
manner  of  execution,  he  has  been  termed 


THE  RENAISSANCE  IN  FRANCE. 


411 


the  Spanish  Bellini;  but  he  is  not  so  hard  as 
that  painter.  His  works,  however,  or  at 
least  those  attributed  to  him  out  of  Spain, 
want  vigor  in  the  modeling  and  conception, 
and  his  title  of  the  Divine,  as  far  as  respects 
excellence  in  art,  is  a  misnomer." 

Sanchez-Coello  (i5i3?-i59o)  was  a  portrait 
painter  of  fame  in  his  day.  Philip  II.  is 
said  to  have  called  him  his  Portuguese 
Titian  (he  had  formerly  painted  for  Don 
Juan  of  Portugal) ;  but  his  work  does  not 
have  the  glow  and  transparency  of  Titian's 
color,  and  his  outlines  are  harder,  although 
he  studied  Titian's  work  at  Madrid. 

Juan  Fernandez  Navarette  (15 26?-: 5 79), 
called  "El  Mudo"  (the  dumb)  was  a  painter 
who  had  studied  the  works  of  Titian  in 
Venice  and  whose  work  shows  a  free  execu- 
tion, a  fine  coloring,  and  a  good  deal  of  dig- 
nity inspired  by  his  study  of  that  master. 
His  finest  picture  is  the  Abraham  and  the 
Angels,  in  the  Escorial.  Gerard  Smith 
says:  "This  picture  is  remarkable  for  the 
peculiar  effect  of  the  light,  and  the  rich 
glow  of  color  on  the  bending  form  of 
Abraham.  El  Mudo  deserves  his  title 
of  the  Spanish  Titian.  In  freedom  and 
boldness  of  design  he  was  surpassed  by 
none  of  his  contemporaries,  and  he  pos- 
sessed the  powers  of  Rubens  without  his 
coarseness." 

Theotocopuli  (1548?  -  1625),  called  "El 
Greco,"  was  another  painter  showing  a  de- 
cided Venetian  influence.  In  fact,  his  pic- 
tures were  often  taken  to  be  by  Titian,  and 
it  is  said  that  no  doubt  this  induced  him 
sometimes  to  paint  in  a  startling  and  eccen- 
tric manner,  so  that  he  might  vindicate  his 
originality.  He  was  a  fine  portrait  painter 
besides,  as  a  portrait  of  his  daughter  in  the 
Louvre  shows. 

The  Andalusian  School  arose  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  sixteenth  century. 

Luis  de  Vargas  (1502-1568)  was  its  real 
founder.  He  is  said  to  have  been  a  pupil  of 
Perino  del  Vaga,  and  his  work  exhibits  the 
grandeur  and  simplicity  of  design  and  the 
correct  drawing  of  the  Italians  of  the  six- 
teenth century.  "Had  his  works,"  says 
Cean  Bermudez,  "been  as  conspicuous  for 
tone  and  harmony  of  color  as  they  were  for 
brilliancy,  composition,  character  and  ex- 


pression, he  would  have  been  the  greatest 
of  Spanish  painters." 

Pablo  de  Cespedes  (i538?-i6o8)  was  cele- 
brated as  painter,  sculptor  and  architect. 
He  was  in  Italy  twice,  and  studied  under 
Michelangelo  or  Zucchero,  but  his  work 
seems  to  show  more  of  the  influence  of 
Correggio.  He  studied  anatomy  carefully, 
and  was  skillful  in  foreshortening. 

Contemporaneously  with  this  Aadalusian 
school  arose  the  School  of  Valencia.  Juan 
de  Joanes  (1523?- 1579),  a  pious  man  who 
always  confessed  and  communicated  before 
starting  a  sacred  picture,  was  its  founder. 
He  seems  to  have  based  his  art  on  that  of 
Raphael,  without  in  any  way  approaching 
his  greatness.  He  was,  however,  a  good 
portrait  painter.  The  next  painters  in 
point  of  time  of  the  School  of  Valencia 
belong  to  the  seventeenth  century.  This 
was  the  great  century  in  Spanish  art,  when 
her  painters  struck  out  for  themselves  and 
created  a  national  school. 


P 


AINTING:    THE  RENAISSANCE 
IN  FRANCE.  (16) 


French  painting,  like  that  of  Spain, 
was  at  first  derived  largely  from 
Italy.  There  was  here,  too,  a  Flemish  in- 
fluence, though  it  was  less  marked  than  the 
Italian.  Before  the  fourteenth  century 
painting  had  no  standing  as  a  separate  art 
in  France,  being  entirely  subordinated  to 
sculpture  and  architecture.  In  the  fif- 
teenth century  it  derived  a  decided  impetus 
from 

Rene  of  Anjou  (1408-1480),  the  titular  king 
of  Naples.  He  resided  in  Italy  for  some 
time  and  there  felt  the  Italian  influence 
which  he  brought  back  to  France.  With 
this  Italian  quality  he  combined  a  Flemish 
hardness  and  closeness  of  drawing. 

Jean  Fouquet  (i4i5?-i48o?),  his  contem- 
porary, was  chiefly  a  miniaturist  and  illumi- 
nator. His  costumes  are  Italian,  his  types 
French,  and  his  handling  decidedly  Flem- 
ish. Smith  says:  "He  is  perhaps  most 
original  in  his  accessory  landscapes,  and  his 
architecture  is  also  good.  The  pictures  by 
him  in  the  illuminated  'Josephus, '  in  the 


412 


PAINTING: 


Paris  Library  show  freedom,  invention,  and 
great  artistic  genius,  and  the  compositions 
in  his  'Titus  Livius'  are  admirable  for  their 
naturalness  and  life." 

Jean  Pereal  (—  ?-i528?)  attached  himself  to 
the  French  army  under  Charles  VIII.  in  his 
Italian  expedition  and  painted  many  battle 
scenes.  Jean  Bourdichon  (i457?-i52i?)  is 
known  as  a  painter  of  historical  subjects  and 
portraits  in  the  reign  of  Louis  XI.  He  and 
Jean  Pereal  with  Fouquet's  pupils  and  sons 
are  said  to  have  formed  a  school  at  Tours 
which  showed  some  of  the  Italian  influence. 
At  Paris,  however,  the  native  illuminators 
and  painters  showed  a  decided  Flemish  in- 
fluence. There  was  an  indecision  in  French 
art  in  the  fifteenth  century,  a  halting  be- 
tween the  Flemish  and  Italian  methods  and 
styles.  In  the  sixteenth  century,  however, 
Francis  I.  induced  several  Italian  painters 
of  note,  among  them  the  great  Leonardo  da 
Vinci,  to  come  to  France,  where  they  formed 
what  is  called  the  Fontainebleau  School. 
From  that  time  until  the  period  of  Watteau 
French  painting  was  decidedly  Italian  both 
in  technique  and  spirit.  The  only  painters 
who  seem  to  have  shown  any  national  feel- 
ing in  the  sixteenth  century  were  the 
Clouets.  There  were  four  of  them.  They 
were  of  Flemish  origin,  and  their  technique 
is  decidedly  Flemish.  Two  cf  them  are  of 
more  importance  than  the  others. 

Jean  Clouet  (i485?-i54i?)  was  court  painter 
to  Francis  I.  in  1518.  He  is  the  author  of  • 
two  portraits  of  Francis  I  that  were  for  a 
long  time  attributed  to  other  masters.  For 
instance,  the  one  in  the  Uffizi  Gallery,  Flor- 
ence, was  attributed  to  Holbein,  and  the  cne 
at  Versailles,  a  half-length,  was  attributed 
to  Mabuse. 

Francois  Clouet  (1510?-! 572?)  has  had 
many  of  his  pictures  attributed  to  Holbein. 
He  succeeded  his  father  as  court  painter. 
"The  works  of  all  the  Clouets  are  distin- 
guished by  a  nai've  adherence  to  nature, 
combined  with  great  care  and  delicacy  in 
the  details." 

Jean  Cousin  (1501-1589?)  began  his  career 
as  a  painter  on  glass.  He  was  native 
French,  and  is  said  to  have  been  the  first 
Frenchman  to  paint  oil  pictures.  He  was  a 
painter,  an  architect  and  a  sculptor,  but 


very  little  is  known  about  his  life.  He 
founded  his  style  upon  that  of  the  Italian, 
Primaticcio.  He  is  perhaps  most  celebrated 
for  his  picture  the  Last  Judgment,  in  the 
Louvre,  where  he  signally  failed  to  equal 
Michelangelo.  It  has  been  said  of  him  that 
"he  was  undoubtedly  the  greatest  French 
painter  before  Poussin;  and  in  the  grace, 
moderation  and  taste  he  displays,  well  ex- 
emplifies the  severer  side  of  the  French 
school." 

Toussaint  Dubreuil  is  said  to  have  copied 
exactly  the  style  of  Primaticcio.  This 
servile  imitation  of  Italian  art  was  carried 
to  a  still  greater  extent  in  the  seventeenth 
century. 


P 


AINTING:  THE  RENAISSANCE 
IN  FLANDERS.  BRUGES 
SCHOOL:  THE  VAN  EYCKS.(iy) 


The  art  of  Flanders  seems  not  to 
have  owed  its  impulse  to  any  foreign  influ- 
ence. The  Flemings  seem  to  have  begun 
picturing  the  life  about  them  in  a  minute, 
painstaking  way  of  their  own.  There  is 
very  little  known  of  Flemish  art  until  the 
fifteenth  century,  Laie  investigations  are 
clearing  up  its  obscure  history  somewhat, 
and  frescoes  done  in  the  thirteenth  and 
fourteenth  centuries  have  been  discovered. 
Monumental  painting  of  these  periods  seems 
to  have  been  greatly  inferior  to  miniature 
painting  or  illumination.  These  latter  were 
finally  done  on  panels  and  became  larger 
and  larger,  but  the  minute  way  of  working 
still  clung  to  the  painter.  We  find  the 
earlier  Flemish  art,  then,  very  exact  in  detail, 
and  very  minute  in  observation ;  but  it  was 
very  often  lacking  in  breadth  and  mass;  and 
in  searching  for  detail  and  exactness,  the 
Flemish  painters  neglected  composition  and 
lost  sight  of  the  larger  elements  of  line  and 
form.  They  showed  a  strong  realism,  how- 
ever, in  such  things  as  texture  and  per- 
spective ;  and  seemed  to  feel  air  and  space 
better  than  the  earlier  Italians.  Subjects 
with  the  Flemings,  as  with  the  Italians, 
were  mostly  religious,  but  they  also  painted 
excellent  portraits  and  showed  a  rare  appre- 
ciation of  landscape  in  a  rather  minute  way 


THE  RENAISSANCE  IN  FLANDERS. 


413 


Allegories  were  more  rarely  attempted. 
The  real  history  of  Flemish  painting  begins 
with  the  Van  Eycks. 

Hubert  van  Eyck  (i366?-i426)  was  the 
elder  of  the  two,  and  very  little  is  known  of 
his  life.  He  lived  partly  at  Bruges  and 
panly  at  Ghent.  The  only  work  remaining 
by  which  we  can  judge  of  Hubert's  style  is 
the  famous  Agnus  Dei  or  Adoration  of  the 
Mystic  Lamb,  painted  for  the  Chapel  at 
Saint  Bavon  at  Ghent.  Hubert  designed 
and  began  it,  but  upon  his  death  it  devolved 
upon  his  brother  Jan  to  finish  it.  Crowe 
and  Cavalcaselle  say  about  his  work:  "It 
was  the  finest  picture  of  the  age  in  Belgium, 
remarkable  fur  its  perfection  of  technical 
handling."  It  was  a  polyptych  of  twelve 
panels,  which  with  their  shutters  form 
twenty-four  pictures  divided  into  two  rows, 
having  five  panels  in  the  one  and  seven  in 
the  other.  Hubert  lived  to  complete  the 
whole  upper  part  of  the  interior  of  the  altar- 
piece,  the  part  containing  the  Deity,  the 
Virgin,  St.  John  the  Baptist,  and  Adam  and 
Eve.  He  seems  also  to  have  painted  on  or 
begun  sjme  of  the  other  panels  and  the  cen- 
tral one,  containing  the  Lamb,  surrounded 
by  worshipers  is  in  part  attributed  to  him. 
There  is  a  curious  mixture  of  the  mystic, 
the  real  and  the  unreal  in  these  pictures,  and 
as  a  piece  of  painstaking  and  minute  work- 
manship the  altar-piece  is  marvelous. 

The  God  Father,  as  might  be  expected,  is 
a  failure.  (By  Crowe  and  Cavalcaselle  this 
figure  is  designated  Christ.)  It  is  a  not 
very  ideal  portrait  of  some  one,  with  a  papal 
tiara  on  his  head.  The  magnificence  of 
jewels  and  richly-embroidered  drapery  is 
depended  on  to  give  a  celestial  glory.  Of 
all  the  figures  in  this  altar-piece  the  Virgin 
is  the  finest.  With  its  rich  decorative  feel- 
ing and  its  magnificent  workmanship  it  is 
inspired  with  a  most  beautiful  sentiment,  an 
exquisite  depth  of  feeling.  It  seems  to  be 
at  any  rate  the  greatest  of  Hubert's  crea- 
tions in  this  altar-piece.  The  Adoration  of 
the  Lamb  is  composed  in  a  most  nai've  way, 
and  is  distinguished  by  the  same  peculiar 
northern  combination  of  realism  with 
mysticism.  Of  Hubert's  brother, 

Jan  van  Eyck  (i39o?-i44o)  more  is  known. 
He  was  in  the  service  of  Philippe  le  Bon, 


Duke  of  Burgundy,  as  "varlet  and  painter," 
acting  at  the  same  time  as  confidential 
friend  and  companion,  and  for  these  services 
received  an  anmial  salary  of  one  hundred 
livres  parisis,  two  horses  for  his  use,  and  a 
"varlet  in  livery"  to  attend  him.  In  1428 
Jan  van  Eyck  is  heard  of  in  Portugal,  where 
he  painted  a  portrait  of  Isabel  of  Portugal, 
after  which  he  started  upon  a  journey 
through  Portugal  and  Spain,  and,  as  wo 
have  seen,  influenced  the  art  of  the  latter 
country  to  some  extent.  The  Duke  re- 
mained Jan  van  Eyck's  friend  through  life, 
stood  sponsor  to  his  daughter,  and  showed 
him  many  favors. 

In  the  Agnus  Dei  altar-piece  Jan  van 
Eyck  shows  a  power  of  observation  which  in 
many  instances  surpasses  that  of  his  Italian 
contemporaries.  The  portrait  of  the  donor, 
Jodocus  Vydts,  for  instance,  is  a  most  won- 
derful rendering  of  texture  of  flesh  and  robe. 
The  hands  in  this  portrait  are  marvels  of 
texture  painting  in  wrinkled  skin  and  hard 
sinews  and  shell-like  nails.  What  a  keen 
characterization  in  the  head,  too!  It  is 
interesting  to  compare  the  two  nude  figures 
in  this  altar-piece,  variously  ascribed  to  Jan 
and  Hubert,  with  those  of  Masaccio's  Eve 
and  Adam  in  the  Brancacci  Chapel,  executed 
almost  contemporaneously  with  these.  In 
these  figures  by  the  van  Eycks  are  found  a 
closer  study  and  understanding  of  detail,  of 
extremities;  but  they  lack  the  large  dignity 
of  conception  in  Masaccio's  figures. 

In  some  of  the  panels  Jan  van  Eyck  again 
shows  the  Flemish  superiority  in  a  really 
splendid  rendering  of  horses,  armor  and 
garments,  and  above  all  in  a  for  that  time 
most  marvelous  rendering  of  landscape, 
although  it  is  too  minute.  There  is  too  a 
fine  rendering  of  space  and  air  in  these 
pieces.  The  Singing  Angels  and  the  St. 
Cecilia  and  Angels  Playing  Instruments  are 
beautiful  in  grace  and  done  with  the  same 
exquisite  workmanship.  In  the  Angel 
Announcing  and  the  Mary  Praying  one  sees 
the  peculiar  angularity  of  fold  so  common 
in  the  northern  schools.  On  the  whole  this 
altar-piece  is  the  finest  work  by  the  Van 
Eycks.  After  many  vicissitudes  it  was  sep- 
arated into  its  different  panels,  and  only  the 
panel  containing  the  Adoration  of  the  Lamb 


414 


PAINTING: 


is  now  in  St.  Bavon  at  Ghent.  The  two 
panels  of  Adam  and  Eve  are  at  Brussels, 
and  the  remaining  ones  at  Berlin.  "There 
are  numerous  unsigned  and  undated  works 
—portraits  and  Madonnas — which  it  is  safe 
to  ascribe  to  this  master  on  purely  artistic 
grounds.  ...  In  the  Madonna  from  Autun, 
now  in  the  Louvre,  with  the  Chancellor 
Rollin  kneeling  as  donor,  the  portrait  is  ad- 
mirable, the  Virgin  almost  ugly,  the  child 


their   full   rich    coloring.      With    the   Van 
Eycks  began  the  School  of  Bruges. 

Peter  Cristus  (i4oo?-i472)  was  a  pupil  of 
Jan  van  Eyck,  of  whom  Crowe  and  Caval- 
caselle  say  that  he  "was  no  worthy  follower 
of  Hubert  van  Eyck,   whose  grandeur  and 
simplicity  were  beyond  his  comprehension; 
he   was    inferior    to    Jan    van    Eyck    as   a 
draughtsman  and  colorist,  yet  as  a  portrait 
painter  he   excelled.    .    .  .  What   repels  us 
most    in    his    composed  pieces 
is   the    vulgar    quality   of   the 
dramatis  personae,    their   awk- 
wardness   of    build    and    con- 
spicuous disproportion. " 


s 


CHOOL  OF  BRABANT. 
(18) 


MADONNA  FROM  AUTUN.   JAN  VAN  EYCK. 


pitiable,  the  scene  and  landscape  quite  love- 
ly."    (Woltmann  and  Woermann. ) 

Although  these  Flemings  lack  the  breadth 
and  largeness  of  view  of  Masaccio,  they 
charm  nevertheless  by  their  naivett  and 
wonderful  workmanship  and  their  love  of 
truth.  To  Jan  van  Eyck  has  been  given 
the  honor  of  inventing  painting  in  oils. 
There  seems  to  be  some  controversy  whether 
he  or  Hubert  invented  the  process.  Oil 
painting  had  been  done  before,  but  it  was 
the  invention  of  a  certain  varnish  by  the  Van 
Eycks  which  made  it  practicable.  It  was 
by  this  invention  that  they  made  possible 


Roger  van  der  Weydcn 

(i4oo?-i464)     was    the 
founder    of    a    new    school   in 
Flemish  art,  the  School  of  Bra- 
bant.    He  was  of    a    different 
cast    of    mind     from    the  Van 
Eycks.      His  art  is  stiffer,  more 
angular,  more  ungainly ;  and  in 
sentiment   he    is  gloomier  and 
sometimes  at  first  sight  repul- 
sive.    In  color  and  the  render- 
ing of  atmosphere  he  stood  far 
below   the    Van    Eycks.       His 
masterpiece  is  the  Last   Judg- 
^^^^^^        ment,  painted  in   1443   for  the 
hospital   of   Chancellor    Rollin 
at  Beaune.      Crowe  and  Caval- 
caselle   remark:    "It   is   a  fair 
subject  of  inquiry  how  it  happened  that  Van 
der  Weyden  rose  to  the  high  position  which  he 
undoubtedly  occupied  in  the  esteem  of  his 
contemporaries  and  successors.     The  answer 
will  be  that  it  was  because  he  appealed  to  a 
feeling  in  the  human  breast  which  generally 
breeds  sympathy,  and  that  he  delighted  to 
depict  subjects  in  which  the  sentiment  of  the 
masses   was    naturally   enlisted.       He    was 
more  indebted  for  the  honor  he  received  to 
the   peculiar    religious    subjects    which    he 
chose,  than  to  the  perfection  of  his  paint- 
ing;   and  it  is  a  matter  for  serious  thought 
that  an  artist  who  did  not  approach  to  the 


THE  RENAISSANCE  IN  FLANDERS. 


excellence  of  the  Van  Eycks 
should  have  been  more  exten- 
sively known  and  have  exercised 
a  greater  influence  than  any 
other  master  of  the  Netherlands, 
that  Germany  should  owe  him 
some  of  the  elements  which  com- 
bined to  produce  the  talents  of 
Schon  and  Diirer,  that  Bruges 
should  owe  to  him  its  Memling, 
and  Louvain  its  Dierick  Bouts, 
that  the  School  of  Cologne 
should  have  derived  from  him  a 
new  character,  and  that  the  mix- 
ture of  the  three  should  have 
found  its  incarnation  in  Quintin 
Massys,  the  only  original  artist 
of  Antwerp  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. ' '  Van  der  Weyden  vis- 
ited Italy,  but  shows  no  trace 
of  any  Italian  influence  in  his 
work. 

Van  der  Goes  (i43o?-i482) 
seems  to  have  followed  Van 
der  Weyden.  There  is  only 
one  authentic  picture  by  him, 
the  Nativity,  in  Santa  Maria 
Nuova  at  Florence.  The  center  panel 
of  this  altar-piece  is  full  of  exacting  de- 
tail, and  is  marked  throughout  by  the 
Flemish  minuteness.  It  has  none  of  the 
fullness  and  grace  of  the  Van  Eycks,  and 
the  Child  and  the  Madonna  are  positively 
ugly.  One  of  the  three  shepherds  looks  like 
an  escaped  jailbird.  The  little  angels  are 
peculiarly  stiff,  with  drapery  of  angularity 
in  fold,  and  are  curiously  conventional. 
The  best  figure  of  all  is  the  one  of  St. 
Joseph,  a  capital,  although  very  detailed 
rendering  of  a  figure. 

Justus  van  Ghent  (fl.  last  half  of  isth 
cen.)  was  another  painter  who  seems  to  have 
followed  Van  der  Weyden.  According  to 
Crowe  and  Cavalcaselle,  "he  seems  to  have 
been  an  industrious  painter,  without  claims 
to  superiority  over  the  numerous  pupils  of 
the  Van  Eycks."  Contemporary  with  these 
men  stands 

Dierick  Bouts  (1410-1475),  Dutch  by  birth 
but  classed  with  the  Flemings;  for  in  1450 
he  settled  in  Louvain,  and  his  art  is  Flemish 
in  character.  His  figures  have  a  peculiarly 


JESUS    CARRIED    TO    THE    SEPULCHRE.       R.    VAN    DER    WEYDEN. 


long  attenuated  appearance,  with  the  small- 
est amount  of  shoulders  and  calves.  The 
solemn  visages  of  his  subjects  show  Van  der 
Weyden's  influence,  although  Bouts  treats 
them  with  more  softness  and  a  gentle  seri- 
ousness. His  color  is  usually  warm  and 
rich,  and  in  his  landscape  background  he 
greatly  advanced  on  the  painting  of  his 
time,  although  he  still  treats  objects  in  the 
far  distance  with  as  much  minuteness  as  in 
the  foreground.  There  is  also  more  soft- 
ness in  the  cast  of  drapery  than  in  Van  der 
Weyden's  work. 

His  two  greatest  works  are  in  the  Museum 
of  Brussels.  They  were  painted  for  the 
council  chamber  of  the  town  hall  in  Louvain, 
and  represent  the  triumph  of  justice,  as 
exhibited  in  the  legend  of  Otho  III.,  who 
having  executed  a  guiltless  courtier  on  the 
testimony  of  his  own  faithless  wife,  discovers 
the  truth  by  the  ordeal  successfully  passed  by 
the  wife  of  the  innocent  victim,  and  com- 
mits his  wife  to  the  flames. 

Hans  Memling  (i425?-i495?)  was  by  far 
the  greatest  of  this  school.  Although  prob- 


4i  6 


PAINTING: 


ably  associated  with  Van  der  Weyden  in  his 
earlier  career,  his  art  seems  more  akin  to 
that  of  Van  Eyck  than  to  that  of  Van  der 
Weyden.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  grace, 
sentiment  and  beauty  in  Memling's  work. 
His  texture  painting  and  landscape  render- 
ing fell  below  some  of  his  contemporaries, 
but  he  possessed  mure  refinement  than  any 
of  them.  As  a  portrait  painter  he  showed 
great  ability  to  render  individuality,  and  in 
his  portraits  his  ability  to  follow  line  was 
simply  wonderful. 

In  composition  all  the  Flemings  seemed  to 
fall  below  the  Italians,  and  in  Memling  is 
often  found  an  over-crowding  of  figures  and 
incidents.  His  Seven  Joys  of  Mary,  in 
Munich,  is  an  extreme  example;  a  most 
naive  conception,  where  to  tell  a  long  con- 
nected story  is  considered  of  far  more 
importance  than  pictorial  composition.  It 
is  a  marvelous  example  of  miniature  paint- 


OTHO    III.    ADMINISTERING    JUSTICE.       BOUTS. 


S3.    JOHN    AND    LAWRENCE.       MEMLING. 


ing,  of  delicacy  and  craftsmanship  in  the 
minute.  His  coloring  is  wonderful  in  its 
purity  and  brilliancy  and  depth.  Among 
single  figures  his  St.  Lawrence,  in  the  Na- 
tional Gallery,  London,  is  regarded  as  very 
charming. 

His  most  famous  work  is  in  the  Hospital 
of  St.  John  at  Bruges.  This  is  the  famous 
shrine  of  St.  Ursula,  a  chest  formed  like  a 
Gothic  chapel,  about  four  feet  in  length,  on 
which  Memling  painted  scenes  from  the 
saint's  life.  Of  these  pictures  Crowe  and 
Cavalcaselle  say:  "It  would  be  difficult  to 
select  any  picture  of  the  Flemish  school  in 
which  the  dramatis  personae  are  more 
naturally  put  together  than  in  the  shrine  of 
St.  Ursula,  nor  is  there  a  single  panel  in  the 
reliquary  that  has  not  the  charm  of  rich  and 
well-contrasted  color.  .  .  .  Nothing  is  more 
striking  than  the  minuteness  of  the  painter's 
touch,  or  the  perfect  mastery  of  his  finish, 
except  the  patience  and  accuracy  with  which 
he  renders  reflections  or  projections  of  sha- 
dows in  burnished  armor.  .  .  .  The  sweet 
harmony  and  pleasing  serenity  of  female 
faces  are  as  grateful  to  the  eye  as  the  dig- 
nified character  of  their  carriage  and  mien." 


THE  RENAISSANCE  IN  FLANDERS. 


Of  Memling  they  say:  "Without  the  stern 
power  of  Hubert,  without  the  grave  and 
measured  force  of  Jan  van  Eyck,  with  less 
depth  of  passionate  expression  than  Van  der 
Weyden,  he  won  applause  by  creations 
embodying  sensitive  grace  and  purity  of 
feeling,  at  a  time  when  public  morality  had 
sunk  to  a  point  of  degradation  which  it  had 
not  known  in  more  barbarous  and  remote 
periods  of  history." 

Gerard  van  der  Meirc    (i427?-i474?)    was 
one  of  the  two  best  followers  of  Memling, 


beautifully  finished  landscapes,  which  hold 
in  broad  masses  in  spite  of  minute  render- 
ing, and  the  "gaudy  juxtaposition"  of  color 
in  the  draperies  of  the  foreground  figures. 
It  is  asserted  by  some  critics  that  the  back- 
grounds are  by  another  hand.  It  has  been 
said  of  him  that  he  was  realistically  horrible 
in  many  subjects. 

In  the  sixteenth  century  there  was  a 
gradual  change  in  Flemish  art.  The  schools 
changed  from  Bruges  and  Ghent  to  the 
larger  commercial  cities  of  Antwerp  and 
Brussels,  and  the  lively 
commercial  intercourse 
between  these  cities  and 
Italy  brought  a  decided 
Italian  influence  into 
Flemish  painting.  The 
change  was  brought 
about  gradually ;  but 
there  was  a  steady  de- 
cadence from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  sixteenth 
century  until  the  time 
of  Rubens,  who  restored 
to  it  its  robust  national 
flavor. 


A 


N  T  W  E  R  P 
SCHOOL.  (19) 


ENTOMBMENT.       MASSYS. 


although  neither  of  them  had  his  grace  and 
sentiment.  Only  one  work  can  with  any 
certainty  be  assigned  to  Van  der  Meire,  the 
triptych  in  a  chapel  of  St.  Bavon  at  Ghent, 
representing  the  Crucifixion,  the  Lifting 
Up  the  Brazen  Serpent,  and  Moses  Striking 
the  Rock.  He  shows  Van  der  Weyden 's 
qualities  in  stiff  figures  of  meager  limbs. 
The  other  follower  of  Memling  was 

Qheeraert  David  (1450?- 15  23),  whose  style 
was  remarkable  for  a  gloss  and  polish  of 
surface.  There  is  a  peculiar  contradiction 
in  his  work  between  the  well-colored  and 


Quentin  Massys 

Matsys  or  Metsys. 


The  Antwerp 
School  was 
the  most  conspicuous  in 
the  early  part  of  the 
sixteenth  century. 
The  founder  of  the 
school  was 

(i46o?-i53o),  also  called 
He  was  the  last  of  the 
Flemish  painters  of  the  older  tendencies, 
and  with  him  begin  the  new.  He  is  popu- 
larly known  as  the  "Blacksmith  of  Ant- 
werp." The  story  goes  that  he  fell  in  love 
with  a  painter's  "  daughter,  whose  father 
declared  that  she  should  marry  none  but  an 
artist.  Massys  accordingly  studied  art, 
some  say  under  Dierick  Bouts,  others  under 
Van  der  Weyden,  and  became  one  of  the 
most  prominent  painters  of  the  period. 
There  is  all  the  Flemish  minuteness  in 


4i8 


PAINTING: 


INCREDULITY    OF    ST.    THOMAS.       DE  VOS. 

Massys'  work,  but  it  holds  with  far  greater 
simplicity  than  the  work  of  some  of  his 
predecessors.  His  masterpiece,  the  great 
altar-piece  now  in  the  Museum  at  Antwerp, 
was  originally  painted  for  the  chapel  of  the 
Joiner's  Company  in  Antwerp  Cathedral. 
Wornum  calls  it  "one  of  the  wonders  of  its 
age."  The  center  panel  represents  the 
Entombment.  The  figures  of  this,  contrary 
to  Flemish  custom,  are  of  life  size,  and  in  the 


composition  the  artist  comes  up  to  some  of 
the  Italians  in  the  matter  of  grouping  and 
leading  lines.  His  figures  are  still  some- 
what attenuated,  but  they  have  far  more 
grace  and  beauty  and  are  better  propor- 
tioned than  those  of  Van  der  Weyden  and 
his  followers,  and  the  angularity  of  drapery 
has  entirely  disappeared.  The  characteri- 
zation of  the  heads  is  wonderful,  and  Massys 
almost  reaches  ideal  realism  in  the  head  of 
St.  John  and  the  Marys.  In  spite  of  being 
so  minutely  done,  everything  holds  its  place, 
the  background  goes  back  and  the  different 
objects  occupy  their  proper  planes.  A 
wonderful  care  and  exquisite  workmanship 
mark  the  whole  work.  He  received  the 
paltry  sum  of  300  florins,  or  about  $125,  for 
this  great  work.  Massys  painted  genre  pic- 
tures besides,  the  Banker  and  His  Wife,  in  the 
Louvre,  being  a  good  example.  Thereis  al- 
most the  Dutch  point  of  view  in  this  picture. 

Mabuse  (i47o?-i54i)  was  a  follower  of 
Massys.  He  was  one  of  the  first  who  went 
to  Italy,  and  he  finally  became  Italianized 
in  his  work.  His  name  was  Jan  Gossaert, 
but  he  is  called  Mabuse  from  his  birthplace. 
He  was  also  in  England  at  one  time,  where 
he  was  employed  by  Henry  VII.  As  long 
as  he  followed  Massys  he  was  his  equal  in 
color  and  execution,  but  after  his  visit  to 
Italy  he  began  to  copy  Michelangelo  and 
Leonardo  da  Vinci,  and,  like  all  the  Italian- 
ized Flemings,  he  lost  originality  of  treat- 
ment and  composition. 

Franz  Floris  (i5i8?-i5yo)  was  a  painter  of 
the  Antwerp  School  much  admired  in  his 
time.  Wornum  calls  him  a  painter  of  un- 
questionable power,  but  of  very  questionable 
life.  One  of  his  most  remarkable  composi- 
tions is  the  large  picture  of  the  Fall  of  the 
Rebel  Angels,  in  Antwerp.  His  influence 
on  his.  pupils  was  fatal  to  any  native  ex- 
pression. 

Martin  de  Vos  (1531-1603)  was  one  of 
them.  One  of  his  best  works  is  the  In- 
credulity of  St.  Thomas,  which  Wornum 
ranks  a  masterpiece  of  that  time.  It  is 
almost  entirely  Italian  in  character.  It  is 
well  composed  and  well  modeled.  He  is  a 
very  interesting  portrait  painter. 

Franckens  is  another  pupil  of  Franz 
Floris,  who  painted  some  allegorical  pictures 


THE  RENAISSANCE  IN  FLANDERS. 


419 


in  a  peculiarly  confused  mixture  of  the  real 
and  the  unreal. 

Barent  van  Orley  (1491 7-1542)  was  a 
painter  from  Brussels,  who  also  did  much  to 
introduce  Italian  methods  into  Flanders.  He 
is  distinguished  for  carefulness  of  workman- 
ship and  a  brilliancy  of  color  which,  it  is 
said,  he  obtained  by  the  use  of  a  gold  ground 
over  which  he  scumbled  color.  Besides 
painting  on  panels  in  oils  and  tempera,  he 
made  cartoons  to  be  executed  in  glass.  His 
masterpiece  is  considered  to  be  the  large  pic- 
ture in  the  Belvedere  Gallery  at  Vienna,  in 
two  compositions  separated  by  a  shield. 
These  represent  the  Desecration  of  the 
Temple  of  Jerusalem  by  Antiochus  Epiph- 
anes,  and  the  Descent  of  the  Holy  Spirit  on 
the  Apostles. 

Michael  Cocxie  (1499-1592)  was  a  pupil  of 
Van  Orley.  He  has  been  called  the  Flemish 
Raphael,  but  he  certainly  did  not  follow 
that  master  with  any  great  success.  His 
best  work  is  a  copy  of  the  St.  Bavon  altar- 
piece  by  the  Van  Eycks.  It  has  been  said 
of  him  that  his  own  pictures  are  remarkable 
chiefly  as  exhibiting  the  decline  of  national 
art  in  the  Low  Countries.  The  Martyrdom 
of  St.  Sebastian,  in  the  Antwerp  Museum, 
is  one  of  the  best  known  of  his  pictures. 

Lambert  Lombard  (1505-1566),  also  called 
Suavius  or  Sustermann,  was  born  at  Liege. 
He  studied  first  under  Mabuse,  then  went 
to  Italy  and  formed  his  style  upon  the 
Italian  painters.  Coming  back  to  Liege  he 
formed  a  school  where  he  had  numerous 
pupils  who  still  further  Italianized  the  art  of 
Flanders.  The  pictures  of  Lambert  Lom- 
bard are  very  scarce.  The  Pestilence,  and 
the  Shipwreck,  in  the  gallery  of  the  king  of 
Holland,  and  a  Deposition  from  the  Cross, 
in  the  National  Gallery  at  London,  are  noted 
as  his. 

Pieter  Pourbus  (i5io?-i584),  of  Bruges, 
was  one  of  the  best  portrait  painters  of  a 
period  which  has  been  designated  as  the 
century  of  portrait  painters.  Wornum  says : 
"Bruges  is  rich  in  fine  works  of  Pieter 
Pourbus.  The  Academy  has  a  Last  Judg- 
ment, by  him,  with  many  small  figures,  well 
composed,  and  conspicuous  for  its  fine  draw- 
ing, in  a  decided  Italian  taste,  in  the  spirit 
of  the  cinquccento  and  of  Michelangelo  .  .  . 


there  is  an  unassuming  modesty  about  all  his 
portraits,  which  are  carefully  and  smoothly 
finished,  though  not  unpleasantly  so." 

Antonio  Moro  (151 2?- 15  78?)  was  Dutch  by 
birth,  but  he  studied  in  Flanders  and  was 
Flemish  in  style.  He  became  the  best 
portrait  painter  of  his  time  in  the  Nether- 
lands. His  style  marks  the  intermediary 
stage  between  the  style  of  the  Van  Eycks 
School  and  that  of  Rubens.  He  was  patron- 
ized by  Charles  V.  and  King  Philip  II.  of 
Spain,  and  later  by  the  Duke  of  Alva,  and 
he  died  a  rich  man  at  Antwerp. 

Among  all  these  imitators  of  Italian  art 
were  some  who  stood  for  the  Flemish  point 
of  view. 

Paul  Bril  (1554-1626)  was  the  best  of 
them.  Kugler  says  of  him:  "He  viewed 
nature  with  a  fresh  eye,  selecting  her  nat- 
ural and  poetic  rather  than  her  arbitrary 
and  fantastic  features.  He  was  the  first  to 
introduce  a  certain  unity  of  light  in  his  pic- 
tures, attaining  thereby  a  far  finer  general 
effect  than  those  who  had  preceded  him. 
His  deficiencies  lie  in  overforce,  and  also  in 
the  monotonous  green  of  his  foregrounds, 
and  in  the  exaggerated  blueness  of  his  dis- 
tances."  Paul  Bril  went  to  Italy,  where  he 
greatly  influenced  the  Italian  painters  in 
landscape. 

The  three  Brueghels  also  held  to  the 
Flemish  point  of  view  in  their  landscape, 
and  did  not  try  to  paint  Italian  scenes  in  an 
Italian  way.  They  are  known  as  Peasant 
Brueghel,  Hell  Brueghel  and  Velvet 
Brueghel. 

Pieter  Brueghel  (1520-1569),  the  "Peas- 
ant," took  his  scenes  mostly  from  peasant 
life.  It  is  said  that  he  joined  in  many  a 
rustic  revel  disguised  in  peasant  clothes. 
He  also  painted  small  landscapes,  with  sol- 
diers and  banditti.  Buxton  says:  "There  is 
a  coarse  humor  about  his  pictures,  which  if 
vulgar  is  better  than  the  insipid  produc- 
tions of  his  contemporaries." 

Pieter  Brueghel  the  younger  (1564-1637), 
or  "Hell"  Brueghel,  is  inferior  to  his  father. 
He  received  his  name  from  his  delight  in 
painting  scenes  suggestive  of  the  horrors  of 
hell,  imps,  devils  and  the  like. 

Jan  Brueghel  (i589?-i642?)  belongs  in 
point  of  time  more  to  the  seventeenth  cen- 


420 


PAINTING: 


tury.  He  was  the  "Velvet"  Brueghel,  and 
was  decidedly  superior  to  his  father.  He 
often  painted  landscape  backgrounds  to  the 
figures  of  other  painters,  Rubens  for 
instance.  On  the  whole,  the  portrait  paint- 
ers of  the  sixteenth  century  of  Flemish  art 
were  its  best.  It  remained  for  the  seven- 
teenth century  to  bring  Flemish  art  to  its 
height. 


I'ARABLR    OF    THE    BLIND.       P.    ERUEGHEL 


P 


AINTING:   THE  RENAISSANCE 
IN  HOLLAND.  (20) 


Dutch  painting  was  very  nearly 
allied  to  the  Flemish  in  its  earlier 
history.  In  fact,  the  Van  Eycks  led  the 
way  and  influenced  the  earlier  painters  of 
the  Dutch  School.  We  have  seen  how 
many  painters,  Dutch  by  birth,  settled  in 
Flanders  and  were  classed  with  the  Flem- 
ings. It  was  not  till  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury that  Dutch  art  struck  out  for  itself,  and 
then  it  became  one  of  the  most  original 
influences  in  art. 

Albert  van  Ouwater  of  Haarlem  is  one  of 
the  earliest  names  mentioned,  and  he  has 
been  called  the  founder  of  the  Dutch 
School.  He  lived  in  the  early  part  of  the 
fifteenth  century.  There  is  nothing  au- 
thentic left  of  his  work. 


Geertjen  van  St.  Jan  (about  1475)  seems 
to  have  been  his  pupil.  There  are  two  pic- 
tures attributed  to  him  in  the  Vienna  Gal- 
lery, the  Legend  of  the  Bones  of  St.  John 
the  Baptist,  and  a  Pieta. 

Jerom  Bosch  (1460?- 1518),  also  known  as 
Hieronymus  van  Acken,  painted  many  pic- 
tures of  weirdand  fantastic  subjects  which 
are  known  to-day  through  engravings. 

Engelbrechsten 
(1468-1533)  seems 
to  have  received 
much  from  the  art 
of  the  Van  Eycks. 
It  is  said  that  he 
was  probably  the 
first  artist  in  Ley- 
den  who  painted 
in  oils.  The  three 
panels,  the  Cruci- 
fixion, the  Sacri- 
fice of  Abraham, 
and  the  Lifting  of 
the  Brazen  Ser- 
pent, in  the  town 
hall  of  Leyden, 
are  said  to  be  au- 
thentic works  by 
him. 

Lucas  van  Ley- 
den  (1494-1533), 
Engelbrechsten's 

pupil,  was  the  foremost  painter  of  the 
Dutch  School  in  this  period.  He  is  per- 
haps better  known  as  an  engraver  than  a 
painter,  and  his  now  rare  engravings  are 
highly  valued.  He  was  a  personal  friend  of 
Diirer,  whose  engravings  his  work  some- 
what resembles.  He  is  said  to  have  had  a 
reputation  as  early  as  his  twelfth  year  both 
as  an  engraver  and  as  a  painter.  At  that 
age  he  painted  a  picture  in  tempera  of  St. 
Hubert,  for  a  citizen  of  Leyden,  who  was  so 
astonished  and  delighted  that  he  gave  the 
youth  one  gold  piece  for  'each  year  of  his 
age.  Lucas  lived  like  a  prince  and  enter- 
tained his  friends  lavishly;  and,  it  is  said, 
ruined  his  health  by  dissipation. 

His  work  was  first  Flemish  in  character. 
Then  he  began  to  show  an  indication  of  the 
peculiar  Dutch  spirit  which  was  to  appear 
later  in  Dutch  art.  The  La  Dame  de  la 


THE  RENAISSANCE  IN  GERMANY. 


421 


Madeleine,  in  Brussels,  shows  this.  Later  in 
life  he  became  influenced  by  Italian  work, 
and  the  La  Vergine  Orante,  in  the  Palazzo 
Spinola,  Genoa,  if  it  is  genuine,  shows  the 
peculiar  grace  and  softness  of  Italian  art 
with  very  little  left  in  it  of  the  Dutch  spirit. 
Wornum  says  that  Lucas'  greatest  excel- 
lences lay  in  his  coloring  and  his  aerial 
perspective. 

In  the  sixteenth  century  Dutch  artists 
imitated  Italian  types.  They  were  probably 
influenced  in  this  by  the  Flemish  painters  of 
Antwerp. 

Jan  van  Schoreel  (1495-1562)  was  the 
leader  of  the  movement.  He  studied  first 
under  Mabuse  at  Utrecht  and  Albrecht 
Diirer  in  Niirnberg.  His  earlier  work  is  so 
German  in  spirit  that  it  has  often  been 
attributed  to  Diirer.  Later  he  went  to 
Rome  and  studied  the  works  of  Raphael 
and  Michelangelo,  and  his  pictures  of  this 
period  are  decidedly  Italian  in  character  and 
form.  He  returned  to  Utrecht  and  there 
opened  a  school,  thus  introducing  Italian 
art  into  Holland.  He  is  said  to  have  been 
an  accomplished  linguist,  poet  and  musician 
as  well  as  a  painter.  He  had  a  large  follow- 
ing of  pupils  whose  work  was  Italian  in 
character  and  lacked  originality. 

tieemskerck  (1498-1574),  or  Marten  van 
Veen,  shows  in  some  pictures  a  coarse 
mixture  of  Italian  and  Flemish  traits.  His 
Burial  of  Christ,  in  the  Brussels  Museum,  is 
an  example.  The  two  figures  in  the  side 
panels  of  this  altar-piece  are  clad  in  marble 
drapery,  and  are  throughout  marked  by  a 
weak  imitation. 

Cornells  van  Haarlem  (1562-1638)  was  one 
nf  the  more  prominent  men  of  this  period  of 
imitation,  a  man  who  lost  all  native  traits 
and  imitated  the  forms  of  Michelangelo  and 
Raphael  with  a  certain  coarseness  of  his 
own,  as  is  shown  by  his  Massacre  of  the 
Innocents,  in  the  Museum  of  Amsterdam. 

Steenwyck  (i55o?-i6o4)  was  a  man  of  this 
period  who  painted  architectural  pieces  in  a 
very  elaborate  manner.  "He  is  distin- 
guished for  his  Gothic  interiors  of  churches 
and  other  buildings,  sometimes  with  can- 
dlelight effects,  in  which  the  figures  were 
sometimes  inserted  by  Velvet  Brueghel" 
(Wornum).  There  were  many  other  men 


of  this  period,  but  they  are  less  important 
than  these  before  mentioned. 


P 


AINTING:  THE  RENAISSANCE 
IN  GERMANY:  COLOGNE 
SCHOOL,  SAXON  SCHOOL. 


The  art  of  Germany  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury seems  to  have  received  its  impulse 
from  that  of  the  Flemings.  The  develop- 
ment of  painting  seems  to  have  been  slower 
in  Germany,  the  old  was  clung  to  longer, 
and  the  work  of  the  earlier  period  shows  a 
singular  struggle  to  throw  off  the  fetters  of 
old  traditions.  The  art  of  the  fifteenth 
century  neither  reached  the  new  nor  did  it 
completely  emerge  from  the  old.  The 
Germans  lagged  behind  the  Flemings,  too, 
in  the  matter  of  landscape  and  perspective 
renderings.  The  science  of  the  human  fig- 
ure was  not  known  as  in  Italy,  and  it  is  sur- 
prising to  find  how  well  the  greater  masters 
of  earlier  German  art  understood  the  figure 
from  simple  external  observation. 

In  studying  the  painting  of  Germany  one 
must  remember  that  it  owes  much  of  its 
character  to  the  art  of  engraving.  There 
was  not  in  Germany,  as  was  the  case  in 
Italy,  the  encouragement  of  great  public 
decorations,  by  which  an  artist  might  reach 
the  multitude.  Therefore,  upon  the  discov- 
ery of  printing,  engraving  was  eagerly  re- 
sorted to  by  the  German  artists,  so  that  by 
its  aid  they  might  show  their  ideas  abroad. 
Hence  nearly  all  the  earlier  painters  were 
engravers,  and  their  painting  shows  the  in- 
fluence of  this  mode  of  expression.  The 
line  of  the  engraver,  the  sharp  and  the 
rather  minute  are  prominent  features  of 
German  painting. 

"  'No  Medici  smiled  on  German  art,'  said 
Schiller  with  truth,  and  it  does  the  German 
artists  of  the  period  the  greater  honor  that 
they  should  have  been  able,  unpatronized 
and  unaided,  to  take  a  foremost  rank.  The 
German  emperors  Maximilian  I.  and  Charles 
V.  appreciated  art  highly  no  doubt;  still  'the 
last  of  the  Knights'  favored  it  only  so  far 
as  it  could  promote  his  fame,  and  Charles  V. 
encouraged  chiefly  foreign  artists.  Some 


422 


PAINTING: 


German  princes  patronized  native  art — The 
Elector  Frederick  the  Wise,  John  Frederick 
the  Constant  of  Saxony,  Cardinal  Albert  of 
Brandenburg,  and  Duke  William  of  Bavaria 
— but  few  in  comparison  with  the  long  list 
of  Italian  princes  whose  love  of  art  was 
proverbial.  German  cities  again  were  far 
behind  the  Italian1  municipalities  as  patrons 
of  art.  Four  years  before  his  death  Diirer 
wrote  to  the  Town  Council  of  Nuremburg: 
'In  the  thirty  years  during  which  I  have  lived 
in  ihis  city  I  have  not  earned  five-hundred 
gulden,  truly  a  small  and  ridiculoiis  sum.' 
And  Diirer  certainly  included  private  com- 
missions in  this  sum;  for  these  were  on  the 
whole  more  frequent  than  orders  from  the 
authorities.  Altar-pieces  were  ordered  by 
wealthy  patricians  for  the  benefit  of  their 
souls,  and  portraits  for  the  maintenance  of 
family  traditions,  rather  than  from  any  care 
for  art.  The  love  of  beauty  was  swamped 
by  abstract  theological  discussions,  and 
though  it  can  hardly  be  said  that  the  Refor- 
mation of  which  Diirer,  Holbein,  and 
Cranach  were  adherents  was  baleful  to  art, 
it  lost  much  influential  patronage  by  the 
suppression  of  religious  foundations.  Be- 
sides this,  art  in  Germany  was  directed  by 
the  development  of  the  national  style  of 
architecture  into  a  different  channel  from 
that  which  it  took  contemporaneously  in 
Italy.  In  a  southern  climate  fresco-paint- 
ing found  its  use  and  opportunity  in  public 
buildings,  and  the  art  assumed  a  monumen- 
tal and  public  character,  only  condescend- 
ing, as  it  were,  to  easel  work;  while  in 
Germany,  where  Gothic  architecture  with 
its  broken  surfaces  still  prevailed,  wall-space 
was  rarely  available  for  painting;  and  the 
instincts  and  habits  of  the  people  also  led 
them  to  develop  their  tastes  for  private  en- 
joyment rather  than  for  public  display. 

"One  direct  result  was  that  artists  sought 
to  disseminate  their  works  widely  in  the 
form  of  engravings;  the  delicate  manipula- 
tion needed  for  this  class  of  work  reacted  on 
painting,  and  although  easel-painting  went 
through  a  parallel  and  independent  develop- 
ment, as  it  did  in  Italy,  the  more  popular 
arts  of  reproduction  to  a  great  extent  filled 
the  place  in  the  life  of  the  people  which 
mural  decoration  held  in  the  south.  A 


greater  contrast  can  hardly  be  imagined ;  it  is 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  facts  in  the  his- 
tory of  art.  In  treating  of  German  art, 
engraving  must  be  regarded  as  of  equal  im- 
portance in  every  respect  with  oil  or  tem- 
pera-painting. It  is  in  striking  confirmation 
of  this  fact  that  engraving  on  copper  was 
less  practiced  in  those  towns  of  Southern 
Germany,  where  wall-painting  in  the  houses 
was  treated  with  as  much  success  as  in  Italy: 
while  wood-engraving,  as  an  adjunct  to 
book-printing,  was  as  thriving  in  these 
towns  as  in  other  parts  of  Germany. 

"Without  engraving,  the  Renascence  in 
Germany  would  have  left  comparatively 
little  for  us  to  study.  It  is  in  the  prints 
which  abound  that  we  find  a  genuine  record 
of  the  life,  costume,  and  manners  of  the 
German  people,  and  a  faithful  reflection  of 
their  intellectual  and  spiritual  struggles,  of 
their  nature  and  their  moods." 

The  School  of  Cologne  seems  to  have 
been  the  important  center  of  German  art 
when  the  impulse  of  Flemish  realism 
reached  it.  Meister  Stephen  (fl.  1450),  or 
Stephen  Lochner,  was  one  of  the  first  to  feel 
this  influence.  There  are  two  celebrated 
pictures  by  him.  One  is  the  Madonna  in 
the  Rose-arbor,  in  the  Cologne  Museum, 
and  the  other  the  famous  altar-piece,  the 
Dombild,  in  the  Cologne  Cathedral.  They 
show  besides  the  Flemish  influence  a  strong 
national  flavor.  "The  'Dombild,'  which 
has  been  favorably  compared  with  the 
masterpieces  of  the  Van  Eycks,  is  a  trip- 
tych, .  .  .  The  figures  are  all  painted  on  a 
gold  background,  and  the  green  foreground 
with  its  many  flowers  seems  to  anticipate  the 
rich  culors  of  the  oil-painters  of  Flanders." 
(Buxton)  Of  the  figures  in  this  picture 
Wornum  says:  "The  principal  figures  are 
excellent  for  their  time.  They  are  small 
life-size,  and  well  planted,  and  the  heads 
are  good,  but  pale  in  color;  the  draperies 
are  well  cast  and  carefully  painted. "  The 
Madonna  in  the  Rose-arbor  is  a  charming 
picture  with  a  quaint  mingling  of  the  Gothic 
sentiment  and  grace  and  unreality  with  the 
realism  of  the  new  period. 

This  Gothic  sentiment  is  seen  to  be  still 
further  modified  and  encroached  upon  by 
Flemish  realism  in  the  works  of  the  un- 


RENAISSANCE  IN  GERMANY. 


423 


known  master  of  this  school,  the  so-called 
Master  of  the  Lyversberg  Passion  (fl.  about 
1463-1480),  whose  works  may  be  seen  in  the 
Cologne  Museum.  He  belonged  to  the  so- 
called  Westphalian  School,  which  was 
closely  allied  to  that  of  Cologne. 

Lucas  Cranach  (1472-1553)  was  a  master 
of  the  Franconian  School  who  settled  in 
Saxony  and  there  formed  the  Saxon  School. 
The  school  was  of  short  duration,  for  it 
begins  and  ends  with  Lucas  Cranach  and 
his  son.  Lucas  Cranach  the  elder  was  suc- 
cessively the  court  painter  to  three  elec- 
tors, and  he  was  so  attached  to  one  of  them, 
John  Frederic  the  Magnanimous,  that  when 
that  prince  was  taken  prisoner  by  Charles 
V.  at  Miihlberg,  he  preferred  sharing  with 
him  his  five  years'  captivity.  So  the  story 
goes,  although  now  it  is  discredited. 
Cranach  was  Luther's  friend,  and  painted 
several  portraits  of  him. 

Cranach's  style  is  a  combination  of  the 
grotesque,  the  ugly  and  the  naive,  and  still 
he  is  very  interesting.  His  drawing  of  the 
nude  figure,  and  he  is  very  fond  of  using  it, 
is  very  crude.  He  has,  for  instance,  to  dis- 
joint the  anatomy  of  the  foot  entirely  to  get 
all  the  toes  in,  and  the  proportions  of  the 
figure  are  not  always  of  the  best,  but  still 
there  is  some  grace  in  his  work.  His  fan- 
tastic, humorously  grotesque  style  is  shown 
to  perfection  in  the  Fountain  of  Youth,  in 
the  Berlin  Museum.  Buxton  writes:  "From 
his  primitive  style  of  drawing,  combined 
with  his  German  naive tt  and  want  of  per- 
ception of  the  beautiful,  his  Eves  and 
Venuses  sometimes  present  a  most  comic 
appearance;  especially  when,  as  is  occasion- 
ally to  be  seen,  he  crowns  these  otherwise 
unadorned  beauties  with  a  large  crimson 
velvet  hat!"  One  of  his  most  represent- 
ative works  is  the  Crucifixion,  in  a  church 
at  Weimar.  Here  he  has  introduced  him- 
self and  his  friend  Luther.  The  artist  is 
being  struck  by  a  stream  of  blood  which 
flows  from  the  pierced  side  of  the  Savior. 
His  portraits  are  hard  and  coarsely  drawn, 
but  they  have  a  tremendous  individuality 
about  them. 

Lucas  Cranach  the  younger  (1515-1586) 
has  had  many  of  his  pictures  attributed  to 
his  father.  He  was  a  weaker  painter  than 


his  father,   and  had  less  individuality,   but 
perhaps  a  little  more  grace. 


F 


RANCONIAN  SCHOOL:    DURER 
AND  OTHERS.(22) 


The  most  important  painter  of  the 
fifteenth  century  in  the  Franconian 
School  was  Michael  Wolgemut  (1434-1519). 
He  seems  to  have  been  a  very  unequal 
painter,  who  at  times  could  produce  works 
of  quiet  power  and  dignity,  but  whose  pic- 
tures are  often  ungainly,  lank,  and  very 
harsh  in  drawing  and  expression.  "Such 
works  as  are  attributed  to  him  are  con- 
spicuous for  the  prevailing  ugliness  both  of 
feature  and  of  limb,  which  seems  uniformly 
to  characterize  the  German  painters  of  this 
period;  passion  being  expressed  by  distor- 
tion; as  if  they  had  an  especially  ill-favored 
people  for  models;  though  this  idea  is  not 
conveyed  by  the  works  of  sculpture  of  this 
period.  .  .  .  His  masterpiece  is  considered 
the  Peringsdorfer  altar-piece,  originally  in 
the  church  of  the  Augustines  at  Niirnberg; 
now  in  part  in  the  Moritz  Kapelle  there." 
(Wornum)  To  Wolgemut  belongs  the 
honor  of  being  the  master  of  the  greatest 
painter  of  German  art,  the  painter  who 
brought  it  to  its  height  as  an  expression  of 
national  life,  spirit,  thought  and  originality; 
and  in  whom  the  sixteenth  century  saw  its 
chief  leader.  This  was 

Albrecht  Diirer  (1471-1528).  The  Ger- 
manic mind  had  in  him  a  complete  ex- 
ponent. In  him  the  studiously  inquiring, 
the  carefully  painstaking,  the  minutely 
observing  were  combined  with  the  poetically 
felt  and  the  fantastically  conceived.  All 
the  mysterious,  deep  and  shrouded,  the 
mystic  and  the  elusive  are  combined  with 
the  most  minute  realism.  They  seem  a  con- 
tradiction, but  are  true  of  the  northern 
mind,  and  Diirer  exemplifies  them  perfectly. 
He  fell  below  many  of  his  Italian  contem- 
poraries in  several  respects.  He  was  not  so 
broadly  grand  as  they,  his  ideas  were  not 
put  forth  with  such  singleness  and  artistic 
simplicity;  but,  nevertheless,  he  holds  one 
with  tremendous  interest,  and  never  fails  to 
make  one  feel  deeply. 


424 


PAINTING: 


"Albrecht  Diirer  fills  a  large  space  in  the 
history  of  art.  So  far  as  Germany  is  con- 
cerned he  is  facile  princeps,  unrivaled  even 
in  his  own  age  by  so  great  an  artist  as  the 
younger  Hans  Holbein,  and  towering  above 
all  his  successors,  with  the  exception  per- 
haps of  Adolph  Menzel  at  the  present  day. 
Wherever  there  are  or  will  be  students  and 
lovers  of  art,  there  must  be  a  great  majority 
in  whom  instinct  and  intellect  will  be  stimu- 
lated by  the  study  of  the  works  of  Diirer, 
whether  as  painter,  engraver,  philosopher, 
author,  or  merely  as  simple  burgher  citizen 
of  Nuremberg.  .  .  .  Although  it  would 
seem  that  it  was  Diirer's  ambition  to  excel 
as  a  painter,  it  is  as  an  engraver  that  he  has 
won  his  fame  and  taken  so  sympathetic  a 
grasp  of  the  human  heart."  (Lionel  Cust) 
It  was  indeed  in  his  engraving  that  Diirer's 
peculiarly  fantastic  and  mystic  bent  seemed 
to  unfold  itself  best;  and  his  power  to  tell  so 
much  with  so  little — so  simple  a  medium — 
is  wonderful 

The  strain  of  the  strangely  passionate,  the 
intensely  felt  in  his  work  may  perhaps  be 
attributed  to  the  Hungarian  blood  in  his 
veins.  His  father  was  a  Hungarian  who 
settled  at  Niirnberg  as  a  goldsmith;  and  in 
that  city  Albrecht  was  born  on  the  2ist  of 
May,  1471.  He  showed  his  talents  for  art 
early,  and  at  the  age  of  fifteen  was  appren- 
ticed to  Wolgemut  for  three  years.  His 
earliest  known  work  is  a  portrait  of  himself 
drawn  with  the  silver  point.  This  was  done 
when  he  was  only  thirteen,  and  shows  an 
amazing  power  of  observation  and  draughts- 
manship for  one  so  young.  Being  one  of 
many  pupils,  it  is  very  uncertain  how  much 
personal  instruction  he  received  from 
Wolgemut;  but  he  says  himself  that,  "God 
lent  me  industry  so  that  I  learnt  well;  but  I 
had  to  put  up  with  a  great  deal  of  annoy- 
ance from  his  [Wolgemut's]  assistants." 

There  is  a  steady,  slow  progress  visible  in 
Diirer's  art  from  the  very  beginning.  The 
hard  angularity  of  Wolgemut,  especially  in 
drapery,  clings  to  him  for  a  long  time;  but 
it  gives  place  finally  to  a  strong  sweep  of 
line  and  broadness  of  mass.  It  was  his 
deep,  arduous  and  continual  study  which 
ever  improved  his  work.  "He  was  a  sim- 
ple, earnest,  industrious  artist,  always  work- 


ing   towards    an     ideal,    which    he     never 
considered  himself  to  have  attained."  (Cust) 

Diirer's  apprenticeship  to  Wolgemut 
ended  in  1489.  It  was  the  custom  after  the 
"Lehrjahre"  to  enter  upon  the  "Wander- 
jahre,"  thus  to  broaden  by  learning  what 
was  being  done  in  other  places,  and  it  seems 
that  Diirer  spent  part  of  the  time  in 
Schongauer's  school  for  engraving  in  Col- 
mar,  and  part  of  the  time  in  Venice,  al- 
though the  latter  has  been  very  often  denied. 
At  this  time  the  Bellinis  were  at  their  height 
in  Venice,  and  it  is  known  that  Diirer  had 
some  intercourse  with  Giovanni  Bellini. 
Here  he  also  came  into  close  contact  with 
the  Italian  painter  and  engraver,  Jacopo  del 
Barbari,  known  as  Jacometto,  who  was  the 
first  to  introduce  to  him  the  proportions  and 
measurements  of  the  human  body  as  a  subject 
for  study.  Diirer  has  in  fact  recorded  that 
when  Barbari  first  showed  him  the  male  and 
female  figure  drawn  according  to  measure- 
ments, he  would  rather  have  had  it  ex- 
plained to  him  than  to  have  received  a 
kingdom.  The  proportions  of  the  human 
figure  became  after  that  a  source  of  passion- 
ate study  to  Diirer. 

He  returned  in  1494  to  Niirnberg,  where 
he  took  to  himself  a  wife,  who,  it  is  said, 
brought  him  as  a  dowery  two  hundred 
florins,  but  with  whom  he  found  more  than 
two  thousand  unhappy  days  There  was 
not  the  opportunity  to  paint  in  Niirnberg 
that  the  painters  in  Italy  found  in  their 
cities.  A  town  of  rich  burghers,  whose 
purse  strings  were  always  pulled  tight,  it 
gave  no  public  commissions  of  any  worth, 
and  so  we  find  Diirer  depending  mostly  on 
his  engraving  for  the  support  of  himself  and 
his  family.  He  became  quickly  known 
through  his  work  in  this  art,  both  in  the 
North  and  in  Italy;  and  when  he  again 
visited  Venice  in  1506  his  fame  was  fully 
established  there,  where  he  was  shown  every 
honor  by  some,  as  well  as  many  petty  jeal- 
ousies by  others. 

Giorgione  and  Titian  had  now  brought  a 
new  glow  and  life  into  Venetian  art,  and 
Diirer  must  have  appreciated  the  vast  ad- 
vance since  his  first  visit.  Buxton  says: 
"Doubtless  he  learnt  much  from  the  works 
he  saw,  and  the  criticisms  which  he  heard, 


MADONNA   OF    THE    BURGOMASTER    MEYER.       HOLBEIN.       (SEE    PAGE   425.) 


THE  RENAISSANCE  IN  GERMANY. 


427 


but,  fortunately  for  his  country,  he  could  go 
to  Italy  without  becoming  a  copyist,  Gio- 
vanni Bellini  paid  him  especial  honor,  and 
Diirer  tells  us  that  he  considered  Bellini  the 
best  painter  of  them  all !  The  great  master 
must  have  felt  thus  early  that  he  was  almost 
without  honor  in  his  own  city.  Niirnberg 
did  not  appreciate  its  greatest  son.  We 
find  Diirer  writing  to  his  friend  and  gossip, 
Pirkheimer:  .  .  .  that  in  Venice  he  meets 
with  many  pleasant  companions  .  .  .  who 
bestow  on  one  much  honor  and  friendship. 
Here,  he  says,  he  is  a  gentleman,  but  at 
home  a  parasite.  How  I  shall  freeze  after 
this  sunshine!" 

But  Diirer  loved  his  native  town  too  well. 
He  refused  an  offer  by  the  Venetian  govern- 
ment of  two  hundred  ducats  a  year  to  remain 
with  them,  and  in  one  year  he  was  back  in 
his  native  town  working  as  faithfully  as 
ever,  without  the  encouragement  so  greatly 
his  due.  He  even  refused  an  offer  of  three 
hundred  florins  and  free  lodging  at  Ant- 
werp, and  he  complains  later  to  the  town 
council  of  his  beloved  city  that  whilst  he  had 
been  offered  these  liberal  sums  by  the 
people  of  other  cities  to  dwell  among  them, 
his  own  city  had  not  given  him  five  hundred 
florins  for  thirty  years  of  work. 

Maximilian  appointed  Diirer  his  court 
painter,  but  nearly  all  the  reward  that  the 
painter  received  for  two  years'  work  was 
promises.  He  was  also  afterwards  appointed 
court  painter  to  Charles  V.,  and  Christian 
II.,  king  of  Denmark,  sat  to  him  for  his 
portrait  and  showed  him  every  mark  of 
honor  and  appreciation.  This  was  on 
Diirer's  third  journey  away  from  Niirnberg, 
when  he  visited  the  Netherlands  and  was 
feted  and  honored  by  the  painters  there. 

"Of  Diirer's  wood-cuts  the  best  known  are 
the  Apocalypse,  the  Life  of  the  Virgin,  and 
the  History  of  Christ's  Passion;  of  his  cop- 
perplate engravings,  St.  Hubert,  St.  Jerome, 
and  the  Knight,  Death  and  the  Devil,  .  .  . 
in  which  we  see  what  Kugler  calls  the  most 
important  work  which  the  fantastic  spirit  of 
German  art  has  ever  produced.  The  weird, 
the  terrible,  and  the  grotesque  look  forth 
from  this  picture  like  the  forms  of  some 
horrible  nightmare. "  (Buxton)  Lionel  Cust 
says  of  this  picture:  "The  engraving  shows 


the  Christian,  clad  in  the  armor  of  faith  and 
courage,  riding  to  his  goal,  conscious  of,  but 
undisturbed  by,  the  menace  of  death  or  the 
horrible  suggestions  of  the  devil."  There 
is  a  splendid  energy  and  vigor  displayed  in 
the  drawing  of  both  the  knight  and  the 
horse  in  this  picture,  and  the  engraving 
renders  textures  with  wonderful  power. 
The  St.  Jerome  is  a  most  beautiful  render- 
ing of  a  cheerful,  quaint  interior  with  the 
bright  warm  sunlight  streaming  in  through 
the  windows.  There  is  a  quaint  earnestness 


KNIGHT,    DEATH   AND    DEVIL.       DURER. 


and  strenuousness  about  the  old  saint  which 
charms  with  deep  power. 

In  strong  contrast  to  this  picture  is  one  of 
Diirer's  most  famous  engravings.  This  is 
the  Melancholia.  It  was  done  directly  after 
the  death  of  Diirer's  mother,  and  Lionel 
Cust  says:  "The  blow  has  fallen,  and  his 
mother  was  no  longer  alive.  In  his  engrav- 
ing all  is  dark  and  gloomy.  'Vanity  of 
vanities,  all  is  vanity, '  dreams  Melancholy. 
'What  use  are  wings,  what  worth  the  crown 
of  bays,  what  avails  it  to  build,  to  measure, 
to  level,  to  weigh,  to  solve  problems  of 


428 


PAINTING: 


CHRIST    ON    THE    CROSS.       PURER. 


mathematics,  alchemy,  or  philosophy,  when 
the  only  end  is  nothing?  Night  and  eternal 
sleep  is  all  that  mankind  has  to  look  forward 
to  in  this  life.'  The  rainbow  is  the  only 
note  of  hope  in  the  composition,  while  the 
comet  seems  to  denote  the  existence  of 
another  world  beyond  human  comprehen- 
sion." It  is  full  of  strange  power,  this  en- 
graving, but  pictorially  it  fails;  for  it  is 
sadly  confused  in  composition  and  an 
explanatory  text  must  go  with  it. 

In  many  of  his  engravings,  however, 
Diirer  reaches  the  pictorially  sublime. 
That  one  figure,  the  Man  of  Sorrows,  in 
the  Small  Passion,  is  tragic  in  its  tremen- 
dous power  of  pathos.  The  Christ  Driving 
out  the  Money  Changers,  in  the  same  series, 
is  marked  by  a  grandeur  and  dignity  and  a 
well-designed  and  simple  composition. 

Most  of  Diirer's  paintings  are  to  be  found 
in  Germany,  but  there  are  some  in  Madrid, 
Vienna  and  Florence.  The  Portrait  of 
Himself,  in  the  Munich  Pinakothek,  is  an 
instance  of  his  almost  more  than  photo- 
graphic minuteness.  Every  hair  almost 
seems  to  be  painted  separately,  and  there  is 
an  infinite  following  of  the  least  detail  in 
the  face;  still  how  well,  after  all,  it  holds  in 


mass,  and  what  a  depth  of  personality  and 
soul  is  in  it!  How  much  preferable  this 
minuteness  to  the  weak  generalization  of 
the  Eclectics  in  Italy!  However,  Diirer  is 
great  in  spite  of  his  minuteness,  not  because 
of  it. 

The  same  year  in  which  he  painted  this 
picture  (1500),  he  painted  the  Burial  of 
Christ,  also  to  be  found  in  the  Pinakothek, 
Munich.  In  this  there  is  more  success  in 
the  grouping  than  in  some  of  his  earlier 
works ;  there  is  less  confusion,  and  the  ele- 
ments of  the  composition  are  kept  clear. 
The  drapery  under  the  figure  of  Christ  is 
also  done  with  more  breadth  and  less 
angularity  of  fold.  The  long  -  limbed, 
blood-streaked  form  of  Christ  is  pathetic, 
nay  almost  gruesome,  in  its  tortured  ap- 
pearance. There  is  no  suggestion  of  vic- 
tory in  that  death.  This  picture,  like  so 
many  of  Diirer's  earlier  ones,  was  done  with 
the  help  of  the  assistants  of  his  studio,  and 
is  therefore  unequal  in  execution. 

Among  Diirer's  most  important  works  are 
the  Adoration  of  the  Magi,  in  the  Uffizi ;  the 
Nativity,  in  Munich;  several  portraits  in 
Berlin;  Adam  and  Eve,  in  the  Pitti  Gallery, 
Florence;  the  Crucifixion,  in  Dresden ;  the 
four  Apostles,  St.  John,  St.  Peter,  St.  Paul 
and  St.  Mark,  in  the  old  Pinakothek, 
Munich ;  and  the  Adoration  of  the  Trinity, 
in  the  Belvedere  Gallery,  Vienna.  In  the 
Adam  and  Eve,  in  the  Pitti  Gallery,  Diirer 
has  created  the  finest  types  of  the  nude  pro- 
duced by  any  of  the  northern  masters.  His 
study  of  the  human  form  which  he  had  pur- 
sued so  diligently  after  leaving  Venice,  by 
continuous  observation  and  drawings  from 
the  nude  in  the  public  baths  of  Niirnberg, 
shows  itself  fully  here.  They  have  the  ideal 
grace  and  beauty  of  the  best  Italian  works, 
and,  as  Lionel  Cust  observes;  "are  not  un- 
worthy of  being  compared  with  such  volup- 
tuous rendering  of  the  nude,  as  the  'Adam 
and  Eve'  by  Pahna  Vecchio  in  the  Bruns- 
wick Gallery."  There  is  no  more  sugges- 
tion of  the  northern  hardness  and  cramped 
ugliness  here,  Diirer  has  entirely  freed  him- 
self from  the  accidental  and  the  ugly. 

Diirer  availed  himself  also  of  his  study  of 
the  human  figure  in  the  composition  depict- 
ing the  legend  of  the  Ten  Thousand 


THE  RENAISSANCE  IN  GERMANY. 


429 


Martyrs,  who  were  slain  by  the  Persian  king 
Shahpour  II.  Here  Diirer  has  "described  on 
a  panel  of  about  a  foot  square  every  con- 
ceivable kind  of  torture;  these  horrors  are 
witnessed  by  two  figures  which  represent  the 
painter  himself  and  his  friend  Pirkheimer. 
The  difficulty  of  treating  such  a  subject  is 
immense;  the  execution,  finish,  and  coloring 
of  the  picture  are  marvelous."  (Buxton) 

In  the  Crucifixion,  of 
the  Dresden  Gallery, 
can  be  seen  still  further 
Diirer's  complete  free- 
dom from  the  ugliness 
and  horror  of  the  style 
of  Wolgemut.  If  we 
compare  this  picture  to 
the  Deposition,  in  Mu- 
nich, we  are  struck  at 
once  by  the  greater  ar- 
tistic feeling  and  the 
greater  dignity  of  treat- 
ment in  the  Crucifixion. 
The  pain  and  agony  of 
death  is  in  this  face  and 
figure,  but  it  is  not 
gruesome  like  the  form- 
er, for  it  has  the  dignity 
and  beauty  and  resig- 
nation and  a  hint  of  the 
victory  befitting  the 
God-man.  The  nude 
body  is  treated  with 
none  of  the  ugliness  of 
the  older  picture.  The 
coarse,  ugly  extremities 
and  ill  proportions  are 
all  gone ;  and  although 
the  figure  is  thin,  it  has 
not  the  horribly  starved 

attenuated  appearance  of  older  German 
figures.  "It  may  be  doubted  whether 
any  painting  of  the  Italian  or  any  other 
school  can  rival  this  little  panel  paint- 
ing, only  seven  and  one-half  inches  high 
by  six  inches  broad,  in  intensity  and  no- 
bility of  expression,  in  truth  and  precision 
of  drawing,  and  in  charm  and  richness  of 
color.  Executed  like  a  miniature  painting, 
it  is  as  large  in  conception  and  rendering  as 
an  altar-piece  of  Bellini  or  Raphael.  The 
body  of  the  Savior  hangs  relieved  against  a 


dark  and  sullen  sky,  which  breaks  behind  the 
foot  of  the  cross  into  a  low  sunset  horizon 
reflected  in  a  deep-blue  lake  bounded  by  the 
purple  hills  in  the  shadows  of  evening.  A 
few  thin  trees  help  to  accentuate  the  solitude 
and  pathos  of  the  situation.  Small  as  the 
painting  is,  it  can  never  fail  to  impress,  and 
it  may  be  regarded  as  the  high  water  mark 
of  Diirer's  painting."  (Lionel  Cust) 


ADORATION    OF    THE    TRINITY.       PURER. 


The  Adoration  of  the  Trinity,  in  the  Bel- 
vedere Gallery,  Vienna,  is  one  of  Diirer's 
grandest  conceptions.  This  is  in  grandeur 
of  line  and  mass  equal  to  the  pictures  of  the 
greatest  Italian  masters;  and  in  fact  it  sug- 
gests, without  in  any  way  being  like,  the 
Divine  Inspiration,  in  Raphael's  Stanza 
della  Segnatura  at  Rome.  "The  Holy 
Trinity  floats  in  the  air  suspended  by  choir- 
ing angels,  and  adored  by  tiers  of  saints, 
who  float  around  and  below  the  divine 
group.  Below  lies,  radiant  in  evening  light, 


43° 


PAINTING: 


SS.    JOHN    AND    PETER.       DURER. 


an  exquisite  view  of  a  land-locked  lake  with 
wooded  hills,  ...  on  one  side  of  which 
stands  the  painter  holding  a  tablet  with  an 
inscription.  ...  It  is  one  of  the  noblest 
pictures  ever  painted."  (Lionel  Gust) 

In  the  Four  Apostles,  or  Four  Pillars  of 
the  Church,  or  Four  Temperaments — for 
they  are  known  by  these  various  names — 
Diirer  has  reached  the  grandeur  and  sim- 
plicity which  in  later  life  he  longed  for  and 
strove  to  express.  Melanchthon,  who  was 
Diirer 's  friend,  says  of  him  that,  "Diirer, 
the  painter,  a  man  of  remarkable  talent  and 
virtue,  was  wont  to  say  that,  when  young, 
he  liked  bright  and  florid  pictures,  and  could 
not  help  delighting  to  see  the  brilliance  and 
variety  of  the  coloring.  But  later,  when  he 
came  to  look  upon  nature  as  an  old  man, 
and  endeavored  to  get  a  closer  view  of  her 
native  face,  he  began  to  understand  that  the 
greatest  glory  of  art  lay  in  her  simplicity. 
And  as  he  could  not  wholly  attain  to  this, 
he  said  that  he  had  ceased  to  admire  his 
own  works,  as  he  had  once  done,  but  that 
now  he  groaned  when  he  looked  on  his 
paintings  and  thought  of  his  own  deficien- 
cies". 

The  Apostles  are  supposed  to  have  been 
painted  in  1526,  and  the  simplicity  Diirer 
longed  for  is  certainly  here.  They  are 
grand,  mighty  figures,  and  treated  with  a 
breadth  in  line  and  form  and  drapery  that 
places  them  with  the  immortal  creations  of 
Raphael  and  Michelangelo.  The  figure  of 
St.  John  especially  is  one  of  the  grandest 
and  noblest  figures  of  all  art. 

Illness  and  anxiety  seems  to  have  blunted 
Durer's  creative  powers  towards  the  end  of 
his  life.  He  suffered  from  a  malady  of  long 
standing,  and  died  peacefully  on  the  6th  of 
April,  1528.  His  faithful  friend  Pirkheimer 
said  about  him  that,  "he  united  every  virtue 
in  his  soul — genius,  uprightness,  purity, 
energy  and  prudence,  gentleness  and  piety. " 
"He  was  one  of  the  great  pioneers  of  art. 
Before  him,  little  or  nothing  had  been  done 
north  of  the  Alps  to  make  art  a  factor  in 
popular  life.  There  is  probably  no  branch 
of  the  fine  arts  which  has  not  been  affected 
in  some  way  or  other  by  the  fact  of  Durer's 
existence.  Of  how  many  artists  can  it  be 
said  that  they  left  an  impress  on  the  whole 


THE  RENAISSANCE  IN  GERMANY. 


subsequent  history  of  art,  and  that  they  re- 
mained beacon  lights  or  milestones  by  which 
the  course  of  true  art  can  be  followed  with 
the  certainty  of  arriving-  at  some  definite 
conclusion?  Giotto,  Signorelli,  Michelan- 
gelo, Raphael,  Leonardo,  Rubens,  Titian, 
Velasquez,  Rembrandt,  Turner;  it  is  among 
these  names  that  that  of  Diirer  will  rank 
forever  in  the  history  of  the  world. "  (Lionel 
Gust) 

Dlirer's  influence  was  far-reaching,  and  he 
had  many  followers  who  copied  his  style. 
Especially  was  this  true  in  engraving. 

Schaufelin  (i49o?-i54o?)  was  so  close  a  fol- 
lower that  many  of  his  works  have  been 
attributed  to  Dtirer.  Hans  von  Kulmbach 
( — ?-i522)  is  said  by  Kugler  to  be  "one  of 
the  most  pleasing  of  Albrecht  Diirer 's 
scholars. "  He  was  a  painter,  who,  although 
not  a  great  creative  mind  like  his  master, 
had  perhaps  more  feeling  for  the  purely 
beautiful.  His  work  shows  a  strong  lean- 
ing towards  Italian  methods. 

There  were  several  lesser  followers  of 
Diirer's  style,  who  were  painters  as  well  as 
engravers,  and  who,  from  the  stnallness  of 
their  engravings,  have  been  called  the 
"Little  Masters."  Among  these  are  Al- 
brecht Altdorfer  (1480?- 15 38),  who  was  also 
an  architect,  but  he  was  perhaps  too  orig- 
inal to  be  called  a  follower;  Barthel  Beham 
(1502-1540),  whose  style  has  been  designated 
as  coarsely  realistic;  Sebald  Beham  (1500- 
1550),  who  possessed  "great  powers  of  in- 
vention, and  sometimes  used  them  without 
much  care  for  delicacy  or  decency" ;  Pencz 
(i5oo?-i55o),  who  studied  the  works  of 
Raphael  and  finally  imitated  him;  Heinrich 
Aldegrever  (1502-1558),  who  imitated  Diirer 
so  successfully  that  he  received  the  name  of 
"Albrecht  von  Westphalen";  and  Jakob 
Bink  (i49o?-i569?),  who  was  appointed 
painter  to  Christian  III.  of  Denmark,  but 
who  was  more  an  engraver  than  a  painter. 


S 


WABIAN    SCHOOL. 
SCHOOL.(23) 


AUGSBURG 


To  the  Swabian  School,  which  in- 
cludes a  number  of  painters  located 
at  different  places  like  Colmar  and  Ulm,  be- 


longs the  greatest  master  of  the  fifteenth 
century  in  Germany.  This  was 

Martin  Schongauer  (1446-1488),  or  Martin 
Schon.  He  was  called  "Der  hiibsche  Mar- 
tin" by  the  Germans,  "Bel  Martino"  by  the 
Italians,  and  "Beau  Martin"  by  the  French, 
because  of  the  beauty  of  his  works.  He 
seems  to  have  been  a  pupil  of  Roger  van 
der  Weyden  of  the  Flemish  School,  but  he 
was  thoroughly  original  and  German  in  his 
work.  In  him  is  found  a  decided  deviation 
from  the  old  and  accepted,  from  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  old  Church;  the  spirit  and  life 
of  the  Reformation  shine  out  from  his  work. 
That  spirit  of  the  fantastic,  which  so  often 
seems  to  break  forth  in  German  art,  fre- 
quently comes  out  to  the  full  in  him.  He 
is  perhaps  better  known  as  an  engraver  than 
as  a  painter.  In  fact,  he  commenced  life  as 
a  goldsmith  and  engraver,  and  afterwards 
became  a  painter.  He  was  born  in  Ulm, 
but  settled  in  Colmar,  and  became  the  head 
of  a  school  there. 

His  pictures,  which  are  rare,  have  the 
hardness  of  the  engraver's  line  with  a  bril- 
liant coloring  besides. 

Of  the  works  attributed  to  him  the  best 
are  a  Virgin  and  Child,  forming  an  altar- 
piece  at  St.  Martin's  Church  in  Colmar,  the 
St.  Antony,  in  the  Museum  of  Colmar,  and 
the  Death  of  the  Virgin,  now  in  the  Na- 
tional Gallery  at  London. 

Buxton  says:  "There  is  a  valuable  collec- 
tion of  Schongauer's  prints  in  the  British 
Museum,  where  the  marvelously  beautiful 
rendering  of  his  female  figures  proves  his 
right  to  the  title  of  Beau  Martin.  But 
apart  from  the  beauty  of  his  figures,  we  find 
a  weird,  unearthly,  almost  grotesque  spirit 
in  some  of  his  works,  which  was  quite  un- 
known to  the  strict  painters  of  religious  art 
before  the  Reformation." 

Bartholomaus  Zeitblom  (fl.  1484-1516)  was 
a  supposed  disciple  of  Schongauer,  but  no 
traces  of  the  new  spirit  in  that  master's 
work  are  to  be  found  in  Zeitblom.  He  was 
a  rather  poor  draughtsman,  but  his  painting 
had  a  solidity  quite  remarkable  for  his  age, 
and  he  rendered  drapery  well. 

Martin  Schaffner  (fl.  1500-1535)  is  a 
painter  of  this  same  Swabian  School  in  the 
sixteenth  century  who  seems  by  his  grace- 


432 


PAINTING: 


ful  and  free  compositions  to  have  studied  in 
Italy.  Till  within  comparatively  recent 
times  he  was  unknown,  his  monogram,  an 
S  on  an  M,  having  caused  his  works  to  be 
ascribed  to  Martin  Schon,  although  Schaffner 
is  much  larger  in  style. 

As  an  outgrowth  of  the  Swabian  School 
came  the  School  of  Augsburg.  This  was 
brought  into  great  prominence  in  the  six- 
teenth century  by  Holbein,  who,  after 
Diirer,  is  the  greatest  name  in  German  art. 
The  full  Renaissance  feeling  came  forth  here 
at  Augsburg  in  simpler  and  more  telling 
compositions  and  in  less  angularity  of  draw- 
ing. 

Hans  Burckmair  (1473-1531)  was  the 
founder  of  the  school.  He  was  a  pupil  of 
Schongauer  in  early  life,  later  came  under 
Diirer's  influence,  and  finally  under  that  of 
Italian  art,  in  which  style  his  best  composed 
and  freest  work  was  done.  He  was  a  rather 
good  colorist,  and  seemed  particularly  able 
to  give  the  effect  of  motion.  He  is  perhaps 
best  known  by  his  series  of  wood  cuts  repre- 
senting the  triumph  of  the  Emperor  Maxi- 
milian, a  continuous  procession  rendered  on 
more  than  one  hundred  plates.  These  are 
really  remarkable  for  their  prolific  invention 
and  their  fine  execution. 

The  Holbein  family,  however,  are  the 
strongest  painters  of  this  school.  There 
were  four  of  them. 

Hans  Holbein  the  Elder  (i46o?-i524)  was 
the  father  of  the  great  Holbein,  and  his  fame 
was  so  far  overshadowed  by  that  of  his  son 
that  pictures  now  known  to  be  by  the  elder 
Holbein  were,  until  recently,  attributed  to 
the  younger.  Schongauer  seems  to  have 
been  his  first  master,  but  he  was  also  influ- 
enced by  the  Flemish  painters  and  those  of 
Cologne.  Later  he  seems  to  have  followed 
Italian  methods. 

The  Saint  Sebastian  altar-piece  in  the 
Munich  Gallery  was  until  recently  ascribed 
to  the  younger  Holbein,  but  it  is  now  con- 
ceded to  be  by  the  elder  and  proves  him  to 
have  been  a  painter  of  a  good  deal  of  grace 
and  feeling  for  the  swing  of  line.  He  had 
a  great  power  of  rendering  the  characteris- 
tics of  the  human  face,  and  this  gift  of  por- 
traiture descended  in  a  wonderful  measure 
to  his  famous  son. 


A 


UGSBURG  SCHOOL:—  Continued. 
HOLBEIN.  (24) 


Hans  Holbein  the  Younger  (1497- 
1543)  is  the  greatest  of  the  family, 
and  after  Diirer  stands  as  the  greatest  repre- 
sentative of  German  art. 

He  is  the  first  painter  of  the  Reformation; 
for  to  Diirer  clings  still  some  of  the 
medieval,  the  Gothic,  while  the  Renaissance 
feeling  is  supreme  in  Holbein.  He  is  not  so 
mystical,  so  fanciful,  so  deep  as  Diirer, 
neither  does  he  have  his  lofty  thoughts;  but 
he  has  a  more  pictorial  feeling  in  general, 
more  of  the  objective  in  his  work,  and  the 
manifestation  of  the  ordinary  world  around 
him  suffices  him  as  a  subject.  Then,  he  is 
generally  simpler  in  composition,  putting 
forth  what  he  has  to  say  in  a  clear  pictorial 
manner.  As  a  draughtsman — in  the  ability 
to  follow  a  line  in  all  its  qualities,  as  it  glides 
over  a  bone  here  or  a  fleshy  part  there ;  in 
the  ability  to  model  and  indicate  planes  with 
the  surest  and  most  exquisite  feeling,  he 
stands  second  to  none.  It  is  this  that  makes 
him  a  portrait  painter  worthy  of  a  place 
with  the  very  greatest.  His  power  of  char- 
acterization is  so  keen,  so  sure,  that  his 
portraits  live  with  a  presence  and  personality 
unmistakable.  He  succeeds  entirely  in 
keeping  his  own  personality  in  the  back- 
ground, and  places  his  sitters  before  us  with 
an  entirely  unbiased  objective  truth.  "He 
looked  out  with  serene  eyes  upon  the  world 
around  him,  accepting  nature  without  pre- 
occupation or  afterthought,  but  with  a  keen 
sense  of  all  her  subtle  beauties,  loving  her 
simply  and  for  herself.  As  a  draughtsman 
he  displayed  a  flow,  a  fullness  of  form,  and 
an  almost  classic  restraint  which  are  want- 
ing in  the  work  of  Diirer,  and  are,  indeed, 
not  found  elsewhere  in  German  art.  As  a 
colorist,  he  had  a  keen  sense  of  the  values  of 
tone  relations,  a  sense  in  which  Diirer  again 
was  lacking;  not  so  Teutonic  in  every  way 
as  the  Nuremberg  master,  he  formed  a  link 
between  the  Italians  and  the  German  races. 
A  less  powerful  personality  than  Diirer,  he 
was  a  far  superior  painter.  Proud  may  that 
country  be  indeed  that  counts  two  names  so 
great  in  art."  (Leighton) 

He    and  his    brother    Ambrosius    worked 


THE  RENAISSANCE  IN  GERMANY. 


433 


under  his  father  until  1516,  and  there  is  no 
doubt  that  the  sons  helped  their  father  on 
his  pictures.  A  book  of  sketches,  by  the 
younger  Hans,  done  while  in  his  father's 
studio  (preserved  in  the  Berlin  Museum) 
shows  him  to  be  even  then  a  better 
draughtsman  than  his  father.  In  1515  the 
two  brothers  went  to  Basle,  where  Hans 
Holbein  found  his  powerful  patron  Jacob 
Meyer,  who  gave  him  the  commission  for 
one  of  Holbein's  greatest  works,  the  Meyer 
Madonna.  In  1517  Holbein  left  Basle  for 
two  years,  which  he  spent  in  travel.  He  is 
then  supposed  to  have  visited  Italy.  Re- 
turning to  Basle  again,  he  met  the  learned 
Erasmus  with  whom  he  formed  a  friendship, 
and  for  the  illustration  of  whose  work, 
Praise  of  Folly,  he  made  a  number  of 
sketches-  "The  illustrations  of  this  famous 
satire  were  as  deservedly  popular  as  the 
work  itself.  .  .  .  The  book  went  through 
twenty-seven  editions  during  its  author's 
lifetime,  and  Holbein  undoubtedl)'  deserves 
an  equal  share  of  its  popularity. "  (Cundall) 

But  for  the  patronage  of  Meyer,  however, 
Holbein  would  have  received  few  commis- 
sions of  any  value  in  Basle.  He  seems 
chiefly  to  have  been  designing  for  stained 
glass,  decorating  furniture,  and  illustrating 
books.  His  best  illustrations  are  perhaps 
the  drawings  for  the  Dance  of  Death.  In 
this  series  of  drawings,  "the  whole  point  is 
in  the  malicious  pleasure  with  which  Death 
beholds  the  consternation  of  his  victims; 
pope,  emperor,  preacher,  nun,  are  alike 
unready  for  his  coming;  rich  and  poor, 
young  and  old,  make  the  same  desperate, 
vain  resistance.  The  drawings  must  have 
been  made  sometime  before  1527,  for  in  that 
year  Hans  Lutzelberger,  their  engraver, 
died,  leaving  his  work  unfinished,  and  for 
more  than  ten  years  the  publication  was 
delayed,  it  being  impossible  to  find  a  wood 
engraver  competent  to  render  the  action  and 
the  expression  of  the  tiny  faces.  The  dra- 
matic feeling,  the  raciness,  the  grim  humor 
and  abundant  fancy  of  these  little  master- 
pieces, as  well  as  the  extreme  care  of  their 
composition  and  drawing,  prove  that  Hol- 
bein must  have  thrown  himself  heart  and 
soul  into  their  composition."  (Robinson) 

Among   Holbein's    paintings  the  earliest 


known  are  the  Last  Supper,  a  Flagellation, 
and  the  Portraits  of  Jacob  Meyer  and  His 
Wife.  These  are  all  in  the  gallery  of  Basle. 
It  was  for  the  walls  of  the  Rathhaus  at  this 
town  that  he  later  painted  frescoes  of  which 
only  fragments  remain.  These  are  now  in  the 
Museum  at  Basle,  as  well  as  an  altar-piece, 
painted  at  the  same  date,  containing  eight 
scenes  from  the  Passion.  The  latter  pic- 
tures are  full  of  strong,  passionate  scenes. 
In  the  altar-piece  in  the  Cathedral  of  Frei- 
burg is  a  most  marvelous  rendering  of  light 
which  streams  from  the  form  of  the  Divine 
Child.  In  1522  he  painted  another  of  his 
most  important  paintings,  the  Madonna  of 
Solothurn,  now  in  a  gallery  at  Solothurn. 
This  is  marked  by  a  decided  Protestant  feel- 
ing; the  Madonna  is  a  sweet  mother  of  this 
earth. 

His  most  famous  religious  picture  is  the 
Meyer  Madonna,  in  the  Museum  of  Darm- 
stadt. In  Dresden  there  is  a  free  copy  of 
this  picture  by  an  unknown  painter,  and  it 
was  by  that  the  world  knew  Holbein's  Ma- 
donna. A  controversy,  which  lasted  for 
years,  was  waged  as  to  which  picture  was 
the  original,  but  in  1871  it  was  settled  con- 
clusively in  favor  of  the  Darmstadt  picture. 
This  has  been  called  the  "First  Protestant 
Madonna."  Llibke  says  about  it:  "In  this 
work  Holbein  appears  as  one  of  the  first 
among  the  painters  of  simple  votive  pic- 
tures. It  is  not  the  ravishing  force  of  lofty 
beauty,  not  the  spirited  nobility  of  impor- 
tant characters,  but  the  fervid  devoutness 
and  genuine  sentiment  which  will  always 
endear  it  to  all  hearts."  This  Madonna  is 
indeed  a  wonderful  rendering  of  a  graceful, 
superb  figure,  and  the  dignity  of  pure, 
earthly  motherhood.  (See  the  cut,  p.  425.) 

It  is  perhaps  most  as  a  portrait  painter 
that  Holbein  is  known.  And  it  was  his 
fame  as  such  which  brought  him  to  England 
in  1526.  Here  he  lived  the  rest  of  his  life 
with  the  exception  of  a  short  visit  to  Basle. 
He  brought  letters  with  him  from  Erasmus 
to  Sir  Thomas  Moore,  and  received  through 
that  person  many  commissions  for  portraits. 
Ten  years  after  his  arrival  he  was  made 
court  painter  to  Henry  VIII.,  with  a  salary 
of  thirty-four  pounds  a  year,  and  rooms  in 
the  Palace.  Among  Holbein's  portraits  the 


434 


PAINTING: 


•most  important  are :  Morett,  the  Jeweler  of 
Henry  Vlll.,  now  in  Dresden;  Georg 
Gyze,  in  Berlin;  Nicolas  Kratzer;  Anne 
of  Cleves;  Sir  Thomas  Moore;  Erasmus, 


PORTRAIT    OF    MORETT.       HOLBEIN. 

and  Sir  Richard  Southwell,  in  the  Louvre, 
Paris;  Wife  and  Children,  in  Basle;  and 
Christina,  Duchess  of  Milan,  in  the  National 
Gallery,  London.  The  last  is  a  marvel  of 


beauty  in  well  placed  spotting  and  in  its 
exquisite  simplicity  of  rendering.  "Both 
paint  and  painter  are  forgotten  in  looking  at 
a  work  like  this;  you  see  only  the  incarnate 
spirit,  and  feel  its  very  sphere.  Though  the 
woman  is  really  not  beautiful,  her  expres- 
sion is  fascinating  in  the  highest  degree. 
The  rich  brown  eyes,  with  the  yellow  ring 
immediately  around  the  pupil,  seem  to  admit 
you  to  the  secrets  of  her  thoughts,  and  the 
full  pouting  lips  irresistibly  command  ad- 
miration." (Wornum)  The  portrait  of 
Hubert  Morett  was  for  many  years  attrib- 
uted to  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  It  has  not  the 
simplicity  of  the  Christina,  but  it  shows 
Holbein's  marvelous  fidelity  to  nature  com- 
bined with  his  unerring  artistic  taste. 

"Hans  Holbein's  death,  like  his  birth  and 
life,  is  enveloped  in  mystery.  All  that  we 
know  is  that  in  the  year  1543  the  plague 
again  attacked  London,  that  on  the  yth  of 
October  he  made  his  will,  and  that  on  the 
2Qth  of  November  he  was  already  numbered 
with  the  dead.  And  so  without  a  sign,  with 
no  word  to  note  the  day  or  manner  of  his 
death,  or  the  place  of  his  burial,  the  great 
painter,  whose  work  is  so  well  and  whose 
character  is  so  little  known,  passes  silently 
from  the  pages  of  history."  (Robinson) 
The  glory  of  German  art  passed  away  with 
Holbein.  After  him  it  slumbered  and  did  not 
awaken  into  national  life  and  an  expression 
of  native  thought  until  the  present  century. 


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